Windy City to Host Waste Expo ‘98

McCormick Place, the pre-eminent convention hall in Chicago, will be packed with exhibitors and attendees of WasteExpo ’98 from June 8 to June 11.

The event, sponsored by the Environmental Industries Association, will feature meetings, seminar tracks, tours, and speakers on an array of topics touching a wide variety of subjects affecting the recycling and waste management industries. Recycling Today is an allied publication of WasteExpo ’98.

EIA membership includes some 2,000 companies in the solid, medical and hazardous waste service and equipment businesses, and includes the National Solid Wastes Management Association and the Waste Equipment Technology Association.

The four-day program is the largest trade show in North America for the waste and recycling industries. Attendees come not only from throughout North America, but from throughout the world. Jackie Wolfe, EIA’s senior manager of expositions, says traditionally more than 14,000 attendees from close to 80 countries attend the event. Of this amount, 11,500 would be considered qualified buyers, making it an ideal location for buyers and sellers to get together to conduct business. Further, she notes about 1,500 attendees come from outside the United States, truly giving the program an international feel.

The attraction of the meeting, Wolfe adds, is the broad coverage offered by the Waste Expo program, as well as the range of attendees who show up for the four-day event, from small hauling companies to multi-billion dollar waste management firms, as well as legislators, administrators and other government officials.

The education sessions cover more than 40 topics. Seminar tracks include business management, marketing, distributor skills, safety, hauling, construction and demolition debris, composting, international markets, medical waste, federal legislative/regulatory issues, landfilling, maintenance, recycling, public/private issues and driver training.

The design of this year’s program is different than in past years, Wolfe notes. The tracks will give participants a chance to specialize in a chosen subject on a particular day. This will allow attendees who are pressed for time to have an opportunity to attend their meetings on one day and visit the hundreds of exhibitors on another day.

RECYCLING TRACK

The one-day seminar track on recycling will be held June 10, the third day of WasteExpo. Topics expected to be covered  in this seminar track include the following: “How to Achieve No Downtime at Any Size MRF;” “The Paper Market;” “Container Recycling Markets Roundtable;” and “Interactive MRF Design Examples.”

A seminar track on construction and demolition and composting will be held June 9. Areas that will likely be covered during the track include a look at both real C&D case studies and an update on the C&D market.

Along with informative sessions, WasteExpo is known for its mammoth exposition floor. As of early March, around 420 companies had registered as exhibitors, and that number is expected to grow. Last year’s WasteExpo program had more than 500 exhibitors covering more than 220,000 square feet of floor space. According to the EIA, WasteExpo is one of the top 200 trade shows in the United States, as well as the largest trade show in North America for the waste industry.

WasteExpo wouldn’t be complete without a top-flight speaker. And, when it comes to speakers, Waste Expo ’98 will have one of the most popular: Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (Ret.). Commander of Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. The general is scheduled to speak on June 10 at 11:00 a.m.

While the Waste Expo program has traditionally been a spring program, starting in 2001 the EIA will be moving its program to the fall. The inaugural fall Waste Expo will be held in Atlantic City, N.J. The association found that autumn is a more productive time for both buyers and sellers, and that the predominant equipment-buying season for the industry is shifting to the fall.

For updated information on Waste-Expo, contact EIA’s fax-on-demand  system at (703) 531-0906 or visit EIA’s web site at www.envasns.org.   RT

The author is senior editor of Recycling Today and editor of Fibre Market News.

(See the WasteExpo Exhibitors List on pages 74 and 76)