Recycling industry pulls together in face of Hurricane Florence

Hurricane Florence’s heavy rain is flooding North Carolina’s recycling industry, where Wise Recycling and several other scrap haulers and processors closed last week.

Gary Taylor, general manager of Wise Recycling, a scrap metal processor in Charlotte, North Carolina, says the plant secured all loose material and closed its doors before Florence made landfall.

“All area mills are closed for steel delivery,” Taylor says. “All nonferrous shipments were canceled and rescheduled. If we have power, we will open back up on Monday.”

The National Weather Service, in an update Monday morning, says “significant river flooding will continue throughout the week” across parts of North Carolina and Virginia. Scrap dealers along the coast have been affected by hurricanes several times before.

Wright’s Scrap Metals Inc., Beaumont, Texas, was hit by Hurricane Rita in 2005, Gustav and Ike in 2008 and Harvey in 2017. The first time, Wright went without power for 18 days. During Harvey, the office flooded, and the city was “decimated,” says Mel Wright, president of Wright’s Scrap Metal.

“You come back and make sure your yard is still locked,” he says. “We lost all of our fence. It was laying in the street. We had utility lines down. There was only one way in and one way out. The city was dark. You're going to have a lot of obstacles.”

As his family and nearby residents slept in one room of his house for months, Wright and his employees assisted in the removal of debris and trash from the streets. He recalls hauling “truckload after truckload” of aluminum. Refrigerators were contaminated and had to go through a cleaning process before any sorting could be done.

“Hurricanes generate a lot of material,” Wright says. “We contracted with mobile crushing crews. We kept them here almost a year.”

Nathan Fruchter of Lawrence, New York-based Idoru Recycling Corp. advises Florence will affect local scrap recyclers, their businesses and employees in the Southeast region, but it won’t have much impact on steel recycling and the national export market as a whole.

“Last year, I felt it was a market mover, but it didn’t have as much effect on the market as I anticipated,” Fruchter says. “There will be a lot of aluminum circling the scrap yards weeks on end. It’s not going to have as much impact on pricing. Anyone who thinks scrap prices go down because there’s an abundance of scrap suddenly, that’s not going to happen. That did not happen last year.”

During Rita, Wright and his family were in the middle of moving the company to a new 26-acre facility. They lost the roof over the new office, and important records were damaged. Wright and his family fled the area. As his employees’ apartments flooded, they evacuated. He sent them bus fare to return home once the storm had passed. He remembers how the community came together to rebuild every time more than the details of the damage that’s left behind to clean up.

“You take a lot of things for granted: the lights at night, water,” Wright says. “It took a lot of us over a year to get back into our houses. You see a lot of people helping.”

To the recycling community in the path of Florence, he offers, “Keep your head up. Be strong. You have lots of people supporting you. I can’t tell you how many people reached out to us. There’s a big support system out there. The sun will shine.”

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) sent out important safety preparations and procedures to employees and business members in the states where Florence is making landfall, including anchor and brace large furniture, secure outside areas, turn off all utilities and protect important documents and information.

ISRI is also teaming up with the American Red Cross for donations in support of the areas in need.

As of Monday, Wise Recycling resumed operations.

"There's no flooding right here, but most all major highways just east and south of us are closed," Taylor says. "A lot of people are going to need help once the water recedes."