The Good Old Penny..RIP Come This Fall

As anticipated in a post we did about a year ago, the federal government announced the demise of the penny in its March 2012 budget. In about six months from now, the Royal Canadian Mint will stop distributing the coin and they will be removed from circulation over time. There is no end date to the process so we can continue to use them and they will retain their value as long as they are around.

We are not alone in this exercise. There are quite a number of countries who have already stopped using their low value coins.

If You Think Of The Recycling Industry As Innovation Challenged…Please Think Again.

While there have been many new technologies introduced into the recycling industry over the past few decades, in this blog we want to highlight two recent exciting developments. One is in Canada and the other is in the U.S.

You can be forgiven if the patented process called reverse polymerization does not happen to be in your lexicon . We hadn’t heard of it either until someone brought it to our attention in connection with the various technologies being applied to the problem of recycling the 12 million plus end of life vehicle tires that are generated in Ontario each year.

Scales…One of Our Weighter Blog Posts, If You’ll Pardon The Pun

Easily the busiest pieces of equipment at any scrap metal recycling operation are the weigh scales. They provide the defining measurement for all material trading, both buying and selling.

There’s Nothing New About Scales.

The Egyptians were using scales more than 7000 years ago. Smart Egyptians.

Weigh scales date back to early Egyptian civilization. The earliest scales were found in an Egyptian grave and are at least 7000 years old. Modified and improved by many cultures over time they increasingly gained relevance with the introduction of the various media of exchange with fixed values. People needed to know the weight of a product in order to convert its value into currency.

Weighing In On Regulations

When we started our business in 1990, the work was more physical and the regulatory environment was less intrusive. Today, we have more equipment to handle the physical load but we are surrounded by a sea of regulations involving such policy areas as human resources, occupational health and safety, the environment, taxation and so on. While perhaps well intended for the most part, they are difficult to navigate and often questionable in their language, intent and execution.

Sustainability – The New Mother of Innovation

Welcome to 2012!

Writers commonly suffer from a condition which is often referred to as “writer’s block”. According to Wikipedia, this is a condition in which the author loses the ability to produce new work.

We find the same type of thing is often in play in business. A great number of companies can tend to get ‘blocked’ by continuing to employ many of the same formulas which have allowed them to prosper in the past. At their peril, they often fail to take into account that conditions around them have changed.

About Innovation

Recycling…Not the Oldest Profession, But Certainly Right Up There.

Recycling has been around for a quite a while. We know this because archeologists have discovered that in periods when resources were scarce they find less waste at archeological sites. In fact, researchers suggest that recycling may date back as far as 400 BC. They also suggest that the Romans were active in recycling. Plato is often cited as a strong advocate.

At some time in the last two thousand years, the clever local inhabitants of Venosa in Italy started recycling the marble from their demolished ancient monuments and using it for paving stones.

Many Kinds of Recycling

Space – The Final Frontier For Scrap Metal Recycling

Not content with all of the environmental concerns we have on earth, we are now required to also focus our attention on all that scrap metal that is floating above us in outer space. Lately we have seen an increasing number of articles in the news alerting us to things falling from the sky and trying to predict precisely where and when they will land and what damage they might do.

We have been throwing stuff up into the atmosphere since 1950. Despite the vastness of space, the accumulation of spent rocket stages, broken satellites and other flotsam and jetsam tends to concentrate in a relatively small section, called Low Earth Orbits, located about 35,400 kilometers above the Earth.

Metal Theft –The Epidemic Grows

Our friend and associate Jim Murray of Onwords & Upwords, who has been working with us for a number of years helping us manage our communications, passed on an Associated Press Article this week  concerning a bronze sculpture which had been stolen from the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa and destroyed for its scrap value. This was not the first such incident and unfortunately, it likely won’t be the last.

Johannesburg gallery where bronze sculpture was stolen and harvested for scrap.

The Symbology of Metals – Where Art & Business Meet

Metals have had a long history of symbolic relationships. Most notably, the attachment of symbols to metals can be traced to the ancient science of alchemy. Among other things, alchemists were interested in turning base metals into gold and silver. Along the way, they created some very intriguing elemental alchemy symbolic codes. An engaging modern day interpretation was designed by the artist Murray Robertson and can be found at:

www.metalprices.com/introduction/symbols_large_with_artists_comments.htm

From his Glasgow Print Studio, Robertson has more recently been involved in the visualization of many aspects of scientific study.

A few of the many beautiful metal visualizations created by Murray Robertson

The Fine Art of Zigging When The World Is Zagging.

What is it about October that seems to bring out the worst in the financial landscape?

The volatility in the markets has continued in force this week. At the time we are writing this blog, the  price of metals has taken a significant beating, including copper which has fallen about 25% over the last three weeks alone. Additionally, the Canadian dollar has been driven down about 10% against the U.S. currency since its peak in July and the Toronto Stock Exchange, with its heavy exposure to commodities, has dropped about 20% as the “bears” have come roaring back. Forecasters around the globe are busy re-forecasting economic growth and other important indicators.