Reframing recycling

At the end of its 2024 convention in mid-April, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) revealed its new identity: the Recycled Materials Association, or ReMA. The move was the most recent in the Washington-based organization’s effort to enhance the perception of the recycling industry and highlight its role in the supply chain.

That effort started in 2021 with its lexicon project, which saw the association team up with Maslansky + Partners, a language strategy company based in New York City, to produce the playbook, “A common language for the recycled materials industry.” However, the organizations’ connection dates back more than a decade to a live research session hosted by Michael Maslansky, CEO of Maslansky + Partners, then Maslansky Luntz & Partners, at the 2012 ISRI Convention & Exhibition in Las Vegas.

Changing the conversation

Maslansky says that research, which involved a focus group made up of representatives from the association’s target audience, revealed that the recycling industry was misunderstood and associated with a great deal of negative baggage.

Brian Henesey of Rocky Mountain Recycling Inc., Commerce City, Colorado, who was ISRI’s chair from 2022 to 2024, and Colin Kelly of Portland, Oregon-based Radius Recycling, who became ReMA’s chair at the end of this year’s convention, both remember that session.

Henesey says the recyclers in attendance were surprised at the industry’s reputation with the focus group, which saw it as “gritty, dirty and a conduit for stolen material,” as well as being poor environmental stewards. While the focus group believed recycling was positive, operators were not perceived in the same light.

“It was awful what people thought about us,” Kelly says.

“It was clear that if the industry wanted to change its reputation, it was going to have to change the way that it communicated about itself,” Maslansky adds.

However, other issues facing the industry proved more pressing, so nothing more was done to address those negative perceptions at that time, he says. Then, Robin Wiener, the association’s president, called him roughly a decade later to say that those misperceptions had grown and pressure from stakeholders had become more significant, with the association’s board deciding action had to be taken to find out how the industry could tell its story more effectively.

Henesey says the association came to understand it needed to be more mindful of stakeholders outside the industry.

“We started out with a goal of helping the industry strengthen its voice and find a way to more effectively tell its story,” he says, adding that as a language strategy firm, Maslansky + Partners is “built on this idea that it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what your audience hears.”

Maslansky says his firm’s subsequent research revealed the recycling industry still had a great deal of negative baggage, and certain aspects of the industry were very challenging, including the connection that many people make with consumer recycling and the blue curbside bin. “The focus of the narrative is on the failures of consumer recycling as opposed to the successes,” he says.

“The second barrier was when the industry talked about scrap or talked about all of the materials that it collects … that people envisioned all of the junk, all of the scrap, all of the waste … and they didn’t envision what it turned into,” Maslansky continues. “We also learned that when you talk about what comes out of the recycling stream, people say, ‘I want that. I want more of that. That’s really valuable.’”

He says changing the narrative to focus on the raw materials the industry produces rather than its scrap inputs changes the story from one that is focused on what was “wrong” or “missing” in recycling to the industry’s positive attributes and the value it creates.

That led to building a new way to talk about the industry designed to make it easier to tell stories about the outcomes and outputs. “Importantly, we weren’t changing the story itself; we were changing the order of the story,” Malansky says. “If we say the recycled materials industry is a renewable source of the everyday products and essential infrastructure that people need to live their lives, all of a sudden, we’re having a much different, more positive conversation.”

A strong recycling industry means a more sustainable and resilient raw material chain, he adds.

Crafting a new identity

Once Maslansky + Partners sorted out the language, it began to build out potential branding approaches and performed further testing before settling on ReMA, its new logo and tagline—Sustainable. Resilient. Essential.—the three core benefits that need to be communicated.

“I’ve always felt that the name is confusing and doesn’t’ tell our story,” ReMA Vice Chair Andy Golding of Toledo, Ohio-based Kripke Enterprises Inc. says regarding the ISRI name, adding that the association’s new name coupled with its new lexicon does a better job of telling the industry’s story immediately.

Before the association changed its terminology and the focus of its messaging to stakeholders outside the industry, Golding says, “It was like feeding meat to vegetarians and wondering why they didn’t like it.”

“What is amazing about this industry is that we bring together so many different commodities,” Malansky adds regarding development of the logo. “We wanted to make sure that was reflected in the logo. So, you can see it in the disconnected dots coming together. But then the flip side is that once we bring them all together and we remake them, they go out and they have such influence as raw materials into these different products. We’re trying to create that dynamism of both bringing together the commodities and also feeding so many different industries.”

The colors selected for the logo—shades of purple and orange—are designed to highlight the industry’s innovation and connectivity and to stand out from other associations’ and environmental groups’ logos, which often use blue and green color palettes.

Raising the industry’s profile

These efforts come at an important time for the recycled materials industry, which plays a critical role in decarbonization.

“We have a goal, opportunity and challenge to capitalize on this,” Henesey says of decarbonization. While a variety of technologies promise to decarbonize the metals sector, in particular, he says, “Recycled materials are here now. We know the importance of our industry. It is incumbent on us to communicate that.”

Henesey adds that recyclers can no longer operate under the radar. “Those days are over,” he says. “It’s time for us to move forward and be more transparent about what we do in our industry.”

Kelly says the new lexicon the association is communicating with already is having an impact with legislators, citing the Capitol Hill fly-in ISRI hosted last July as an example.

“The conversations were enjoyable and more productive when we focused on what we do and how we impact the world,” he says, adding that speaking about the industry differently took legislators’ focus off what they saw with their eyes and got them thinking about what recyclers actually do.

Golding also noticed a difference at the fly-in. “I had so much confidence in what I was talking about,” he says. “Generally, people love recycling. People don’t understand it, though.”

But focusing the discussion on the outputs of the process makes it easier for policymakers and community members to understand the role recyclers play.

With the ReMA name, Kelly says he’s not fearful the organization will lose any of the cache it has built with legislators. “Part of our brand on Capitol Hill is our people,” he says. “Our political capital is our people and our ability to work with people. I’m comfortable that will carry forward.”

Golding thinks the rebranding will get ReMA a seat at more tables it should have been at long ago given its essential role in the supply chain.

“We feel like we’ve built a clear and compelling story to tell the industry story,” Maslansky adds, saying that taking control of the industry’s narrative is important in today’s political environment. “If you’re not telling your story, somebody’s telling it for you. What drove the start of this work was that other people were telling the story in a negative way.”

Maslansky says the change from ISRI to ReMA demonstrates how far the industry has come since the ISRI name was adopted in 1987 when the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel merged with the National Association of Recycling Industries.

“When you change the language, you change the debate,” he says. “We’re creating a new slate on which we can tell our story. It opens up all these other conversations that are less about defending the turf on which these recyclers operate and more on how the industry is really driving these benefits more broadly for the economy.”

The author is editorial director of Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net.