Seeing magic in scrap

This year has started with so many across the recycling industry expressing apprehension and caution over how markets will shake out in the coming months.

It’s been especially noticeable in my beat, recovered paper, where box demand has been in flux and facilities are shutting down, prompting a lot of questions and not a lot of insight. (For more on box demand and the old corrugated containers market outlook for this year, see “Uncertainty across the market,” starting on Page 40.)

Enter Ecore International, the subject of this month’s cover story, beginning on Page 32.

The company, which claims to be in the business of rubber circularity rather than rubber recycling, prides itself on constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation and discovering more efficient, environmentally friendly ways of processing and recycling rubber.

“Nobody’s an employee, everyone’s a magician, because we take things nobody wants at once and we turn them into things people pay a premium for,” Ecore President and CEO Art Dodge tells Recycling Today. “Everything we do is magic.”

I had never considered the “magic” of recycling.

"To reframe the process as magical really highlights the impactful work happening throughout every sector.”

It’s an industry that touches countless lives on a daily basis, but to reframe the process as magical really highlights the impactful work happening across every sector. While it doesn’t exactly improve market conditions, it maybe helps alleviate some of the doom and gloom and inspire a little more optimism.

“It’s really what keeps me motivated is how much fun it is to continue to invent something new,” Dodge says of developing recycling and manufacturing processes.

It’s similar to when the then-Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries rebranded to what is now known as the Recycled Materials Association (ReMA). The move was part of the Washington-based organization’s effort to enhance the perception of the recycling industry and highlight its role in the supply chain while doing away with the misunderstandings and negativity often associated with recycling.

“When you change the language, you change the debate,” Michael Maslansky, CEO of language strategy company Maslansky + Partners ReMA worked with on the rebranding, said last year. “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.”

It’s that simple shift in thinking that highlights the value this industry creates every day, and maybe we can all find a little motivation in that “magic.”