By Recycling, You Help to Create Jobs

At last week's Hospitality Design Exposition & Conference I had an opportunity to chat with Mark Savel. He is with North Billerica, Mass.-based Sleep Inc. What intrigued me about Mark's company is that it not only sells high-quality mattresses, it also takes them back for recycling and then deconstructs them at its own facility in Texas. Very unique. Mark's company is able to generate new revenue from the sale of the materials removed from old mattresses: foam, steel, wood. Sleep Inc. is helping to stop the flow of mattresses not only to landfills but also to the retail market where used hotel mattresses are resold. Sleep Inc. is just one example of a company that is benefiting financially from recycling while taking a cradle to cradle approach to manufacturing. What Sleep Inc. is doing is helping to fuel a scrap recycling market that has exploded as of late.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the scrap recycling industry added 10,000 jobs between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. Estimates put the industry’s total number of jobs at about 113,000. When you recycle, you also help to contribute to this industry that has grown 40 percent in monetary value since 2009. Earlier this month, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries released new industry facts and figures showing that in 2010 alone, more than 130 million metric tons of scrap metal, paper, plastic, glass, textiles, rubber and electronics were recycled. Valued at more than $77 billion, these materials were manufactured into specification grade commodities by the U.S. scrap recycling industry for sale as valuable feedstock material to industrial consumers in the United States and in more than 155 countries around the world. China, Canada, South Korea, Turkey and Taiwan were the top importers. Iron and steel are recycled most, followed by paper and aluminum.

When you recycle, know that what you are doing is not only good for the environment, it is good for the economy as well. Make sure your employees understand this. Perhaps it will give them just a little more incentive to participate in recycling.