Acting globally.

I will give everyone a little hint about what it is like working at Recycling Today magazine. We are cliche killers. What I mean by that is that any staff member who slips and uses one of the many cliches floating around gets a good-natured ribbing. In our view, writers of even modest talent attempt to avoid the use of cliches as much as possible.

With that in mind, I am going to abuse several cliches to make a point. The first one that seems to be used a lot around the annual Earth Day celebrations across the country is, "Think globally, act locally." Having just come back from a recycling conference, I think that for the scrap industry perhaps the cliche should read, "Think locally, act globally."

Recyclables are global commodities. Just because a scrap dealer operates in the heart of the country doesn't mean that person isn't affected, either directly or indirectly, by events thousands of miles away.

This mindset might not have been commonplace 10 years ago. However, today, China, India and other countries are aggressively pursuing greater tonnages of secondary commodities from the United States, Western Europe and other regions of the world, creating a highly volatile market. Scrap dealers who are just focused on servicing a small geographical area may find their businesses in jeopardy.

"What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?" one might ask, if willing to draw upon a cliche.

As China has become the dominant market for many grades of metal, paper and plastics, events there are important to all the people up and down the secondary commodities chain.

For a company to thrive it has to be cognizant of, if not fully involved in, the global market.

While there are basic macro economic issues that drive markets worldwide (with the classic supply/demand module as the standard bearer), there also are regional, countrywide and even mill-specific issues that must be taken into account at the same time one is trying to comprehend the overall market for secondary commodities.

Recycling Today's core coverage is of the North American scrap industry, but we recognize that the industry is far larger than our small section of the globe. As developing countries modernize their economies, they are consuming more secondary materials.

As we look to further reflect the changing dynamics of the scrap recycling industry, we are seeking the input from our readers who operate outside the North American marketplace, especially those who view our products in the electronic (read: Internet) world. If you would like to offer your particular insight, please contact me at either [e-mail] or at [phone], ext. 231.