Saving the Recycling Business, 2009 (continued)

How I Saved My Company in 2009-10: Yearbook 2

I described yesterday the precipice I found myself on in January 2009.   I'd just purchased 50,000 s.f. of overhead.   The renter who paid (the other) half of the mortgage had gone out of business.

Learning to enjoy the desert

Scrap prices from almost everything we tore down, except for chips and boards, were at pre World War I lows.  I had a business consultant tell me to liquidate everything and try to rent the building, and a couple of VC (vulture capital) deals come circling around.  A competitor started offering all my VT and NH clients 1 cent per pound recycling on CRT televisions, something unheard of, supposedly financed by an international company overseas - but mysteriously carpet-bombed at all our New England clients - no similar interest by the Asian company in Arizona (where we also did business), and as mysteriously, the Asian company disqualified it if it was collected in Good Point trucks and delivered to the same place...

And this sounds like a joke, but some people out there know the guy - a scrap dealer from outside the state started calling my cell phone and saying the F word and saying I was screwed and he'd locked  up ALL my accounts, and I was going to regret not having sold to him.  I'd hang up and he'd be the next call, 30 seconds later.   (I think he must have had a brain aneurysm, it wasn't normal, even for scrap dealers.)

All I had going for me was Chicas Bravas - the NPR discovered our fair trade recycling banquet in Sonora Mexico.  And our long-running partnership with the SKD (contract manufacturer) in SE Asia was still alive.  And both had CRT glass cullet end markets for free nearby.   We were hitting 22% reuse then, which was not as high as off-lease computer dealers, but it was 90% of our income in January 2009.  We just had to believe in it and make sure our clients could believe in us.

SSFF: "NY e-Waste Law is a Disaster?"

Live Presentation by NYDEC

I'm 'live blogging' during a presentation by Mark M. of NYDEC here at the NY SW Federation conference (Sagamore).   Slide one:   NY legislation allows OEMs to claim tonnage from businesses with fewer than 50 employees, colleges, and schools.

Missing slide:  NYDEC does not release the numbers for obligations for the OEMs (as of May), and tells them there is no penalty for not meeting tonnage the first year.  If the manufacturer doesn't know how many tons they are obligated to collect, well, they will pay for the CHEAP tons (computers not curbside TVs).  Our expensive TV recycling is without a "sponsor".

Missing slide:  Outcome - My company drops its largest municipal contract.  After not getting paid for months, we can't expect the OEMs to pay us if they don't have their obligations released.  We should have dropped the TV tonnage months ago and concentrated only on business and college institutional tonnage.


Missing slide:  We were suckers to collect curbside TVs for as long as we did.

Bitter?  Moi?  I'm just reporting on the sour grape harvest from here on the front lines.  I'm sure they have plenty of reasons to call this NY Product stewardship law a success.   But there are signs that they don't know what they are doing, and are making it up as they go along.