Mark Reiter receives ISRI Lifetime Achievement Award

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, has honored Mark Reiter as its 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree. Reiter, who died earlier this year, posthumously received the award for his efforts to advance the scrap recycling industry, the association states in a news release on the award.

Politics and the political process defined Reiter, ISRI states. He started in politics at age 10, working to help various candidates in his hometown of the Bronx, New York. He attended Stuyvesant High School and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Temple University.

Reiter worked for New York Mayor John Lindsay, and eventually, he moved to Washington to work for Rep. Bella Abzug of New York. He also spent 10 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and then returned to Capitol Hill as a senior staff member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In 1992, he left government and joined ISRI as manager of legislative and international affairs. As Reiter once said, “Being connected to politics keeps my engine going.”

Reiter established ISRI’s first grassroots advocacy network to provide support for the Superfund Recycling Equity Act (SREA), lobbying for it in a decade-long process that culminated in its passage in 1999. According to ISRI, that law saved the recycling industry hundreds of millions of dollars and created the precedent for recognizing recycling operations as distinct from disposal operations.

Although he was a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, Reiter worked across party lines to help ISRI achieve its policy goals.

Reiter served as ISRI’s vice president of government relations until his death in January. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously during ISRI’s 2020 Virtual Awards Ceremony Oct. 21.

“Having had the pleasure and honor of working beside Mark for his entire ISRI career, I can honestly say that doing right for the membership was always at the top of his mind and doing it with integrity was always his first priority,” says ISRI President Robin Wiener. “Mark absolutely loved working for the recycling industry and was dedicated to advancing the interests of each and every member. What he loved most was using his experience and expertise to help empower individual members to feel comfortable meeting with their local, state and national representatives. Mark helped create ISRI’s original grassroots advocacy network. He would tell members that when meeting with your elected representatives, always remember that you are not a Democrat, you are not a Republican, you are an ISRI-ite! In other words, if you want to do what is best for the industry, you have to put ISRI above party politics.”