Taking flight: recyclers take to the air to attend this spring's numerous industry conferences.

Robust markets led to a busy travel season for many recyclers this spring, with many conferences and trade shows boasting strong attendance.

WasteExpo took place in Las Vegas in early April, with more than 11,000 in attendance. Also in April, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) drew record attendance at its Annual Convention (See "Talk of the Town," starting on page 98 of the June 2006 issue of Recycling Today.)

In late March, the National Demolition Association also brought in a strong crowd of between 1,600 and 1,700 attendees to its 33rd annual convention in Nashville, Tenn.

Record attendance wasn't just a North American phenomenon, either. The Bureau of International Recycling's (BIR) Annual Convention hosted more than 900 delegates and 200 accompanying persons the best attendance in its 20-year history, according to the event's planners--during the convention's run May 29-31 in Beijing.

During WasteExpo, attendees took advantage of a number of educational sessions on a variety of topics when they weren't touring the exhibit halls.

PHONE HOME. As cell phone usage gains popularity in the United States, and all over the world, recyclers are faced with a number of challenges in recycling the phones at the end of their useful lives, according to Mike Newman, vice president of marketing and special products for ReCellular Inc., Dexter, Mich.

At a presentation on electronics recycling at WasteExpo, Newman said the United States is home to approximately 200 million mobile phone users, with 21.8 million adding service in 2005. With an average life span of about 18 months, thousands of mobile phones are available for reuse or recycling in some form each month.

Unique characteristics of cell phones as products make them somewhat more challenging to recycle than other electronics, Newman said. Cell phones' short lifespan, high perceived product value, low perceived product worth and small size can put up barriers to cell phone recycling.

When phones reach the end of their useful lives, about 65 percent of them are used again in their original form as phones, according to Newman. About 35 percent are recycled for their precious metal content.

According to Newman, future trends in cell phone recycling will include increased scrutiny of transboundary movement and greater emphasis on the security of personal information contained on cell phones.

In addition to electronics recycling, WasteExpo sessions explored how to approach single-stream recycling.

SINGLE-STREAM SUCCESS. Approaching single-stream recycling from the manufacturer's point of view is key to setting up a successful system, according to consultant Richard Gertman of Environmental Planning Consultants in San Jose, Calif., who spoke at WasteExpo.

"Single stream is here to stay," said Gertman, advising attendees that quality issues still plague single-stream recycling systems, resulting in higher costs for manufacturers.

While the single-stream approach is easier for the resident, it is not necessarily more convenient for consumers of secondary commodities, Gertman said. He advised developing more detailed contracts specifying what happens if the material does not meet specifications and offering incentives as rewards for cleaner material.

"Just good enough to sell is not good enough," Gertman said.

Michael Taylor, market area vice president of the South group of Waste Management Recycle America, based in Houston, also addressed attendees on single-stream recycling.

Taylor outlined five main design considerations when developing a single-stream system: inbound quality, material streams, end-markets, volume and seasonal variations.

Taylor also told attendees that single-stream recycling is a better fit for larger systems.

The construction and demolition recycling industry was also represented on the spring trade show circuit with the National Demolition Association meeting in March, where recycling was among many demolition industry topics discussed.

NASHVILLE SUCCESS STORY. The mayor of Nashville, Tenn., personally welcomed attendees of the National Demolition Association Annual Convention to that city and commented on the professional job they did on a prominent Music City project.

Mayor Bill Purcell thanked the demolition industry for the professional manner in which it demolished the city's former waste-to-energy plant earlier this decade, recycling nearly 98 percent of the resulting materials.

Consulting firm Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc. (GBB), Fairfax, Va., guided the city in the demolition project to make way for a new stadium for the Nashville Sounds minor league baseball team.

Purcell said the city's goal from the outset was for the project to be "clean and lean and green," and that the city government, along with GBB Inc. and five contractors, meet that goal.

The project, budgeted for $2.4 million, was completed for a net cost of just $115,000 after the sale of materials and equipment. "That was a lot of hard work by a lot of people," Purcell told convention attendees. "The members of your association were involved all along the way."

At another session, Bob Brickner of GBB demonstrated how steel and other metals provided revenue while crushed concrete was marketed to other municipal agencies. Additionally, some $980,000 worth of equipment from the former waste-to-energy plant was marketed via Internet auctions.

The metals market that made the steel recovered from the Nashville demolition project so valuable was a hot topic on the world stage at the BIR World Recycling Conference.

STEEL'S SUSTAINED STRENGTH. Speaking at the Ferrous Division meeting at the BIR's spring convention, securities analyst Peter Hickson of UBS Investment Bank, London, compared the current steel situation to the one that accompanied the urbanization and re-building of Japan in the 1960s.

"We may see a set of steel prices that are sustained at $400 or $450 per ton [and higher] for an elevated period," said Hickson.

Chinas appetite for steel has put a strain on the global supply for steelmaking materials, resulting in continued high prices for ferrous scrap, iron ore and pig iron.

Hickson characterized the prices Chinese steelmakers are paying for imported scrap as "showing a pretty relentless rise," adding that the United States is "clearly the biggest player" as a supplier of ferrous scrap to China.

BIR Ferrous Division President Colin lies, of U.K.-based European Metal Recycling Ltd., characterized the steel industry as experiencing strong "underlying demand coupled with consolidated supply." The result is that "prices for all ferrous [scrap] grades have increased due to strong fundamentals," he said.

Iles said he expects conditions to remain favorable. "Increased scrap consumption is evident and appears sustainable for the future," he said. "The tight supply conditions are expected to continue until mills are satisfied with their inventory."

Denis Ilatovskiy of Russia's MAIR Joint Stock Co. wondered aloud why scrap prices are rising since China's new steelmaking capacity is not using electric are furnaces (EAFs). He also expressed concerns that steel industry consolidation in Europe is putting the widely fragmented scrap sellers in Russia and Ukraine at a disadvantage.

In a panel discussion at the division meeting, Jeremy Sutcliffe of Australia's Sims Group Ltd. said that even though Chinas new steel mills are not using EAFs, Chinas enormous new capacity still represents "big figures" even if they are only using scrap as 15 percent of their charges.

A calendar of industry events can be found on page 86 of this issue and at www.RecyclingToday.com.

ON THE SCENE

For additional coverage of recycling industry conferences, visit www.RecyclingToday.com which includes information from Electronics Recycling Summit and more coverage of BIR, ISRI and WasteExpo.