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

Sure enough however, immediately following this announcement we began to receive enquiries about selling pennies for their scrap value. We therefore felt it appropriate to re-blog the answer.

Sorry But Pennies Don’t Qualify As Scrap Metal.

Even if pennies were made of copper, ( which they mostly were until 1997 when they were re-compositioned to 94% steel), we can’t buy them for their scrap value. It is illegal to melt or deface Canadian coins. Both the Currency Act and the Canadian Criminal Code state that no person can melt down, break-up or use otherwise as currency any coin that is legal tender in Canada.

Penny from The Big Bang Theory...one of the few Pennys that won't be disappearing in the fall.

In case you are wondering, about the rationale for the impending demise of the penny, here are a couple of interesting factoids.

1. The government says it costs about 1.6 cents to produce a penny.
2. Adjusted for inflation, an 1870 penny would be worth about 31 cents today.

So those jars of pennies that are stored in kitchens, cupboards, drawers, mason jars, piggy banks and old cookie tins across the country need to be cashed in or spent.

Turn Your “Spring Cleaning” Into “Spring Greening”.

With winter over and the smells and sounds of spring finally in the air, it is time to stop fighting with all that stuff that is stored, for no apparent or logical reason, in basements, attics, garages, warehouses and other assorted storage areas.

It is also a time of year when we more frequently receive calls from folks who have been left to dispose of houses, furnishings and stuff left behind by parents or relatives who have either downsized their accommodations or passed on.

You might be surprised at how much recyclable metal you end up with during your spring cleaning

It is fascinating to reflect on the fact that there was a generation of people who grew up in an era when everything had value and because things couldn’t easily be replaced they saved everything they could for another day when it could be put to good use. The consequence, of course, is that they would leave jars and bins and boxes of metal screws, nails, brass, copper pipe, electrical wiring and so on.

All of this, tends to occur very much to the bewilderment of those cleaning and emptying those houses and storage areas, who are themselves of a generation where it seems absolutely everything and anything is disposable, expendable and/or obsolete on a planned or unplanned basis.

Our Business Is All About Scrap Metal.

The good news is that there are now many new and accessible ways for folks to find buyers for some of this stuff. For heritage and estate items such as jewelry, flatware, and silver plated vessels we always remind people that we are only buying metal. Consequently, we recommend they look at other sources if they are seeking to recover value over and above the metal salvage value of these kinds of items.

Two Convenient West End GTA Locations. 

For all the rest of their scrap metal items, we encourage people to visit us at either of our locations in Mississauga or in Oakville. We are conveniently located in these communities and open for business from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday and from 7:30 AM to 12:00 noon on Saturday. Maps to these locations are on our web site at www.peelscrapmetalrecycling.com.

End of Life Electronics Recycling @ Peel Scrap Metal Recycling.

In addition to a wide range of ferrous and non-ferrous metals,  we will accept, recycle and pay you something for those old Commodor 64’s, computers, printers, monitors, word processing machines, TV’s, stereos and other electronic scrap as well as appliances and scrap metal odds and ends.

If you are unsure about what to do with some items that you have discovered, please visit us on line at www.peelscrapmetalrecycling.com, or give us a call at 905-612-1288 in Mississauga or 905-825-1288 in Oakville. Alternatively, you can e-mail us (with pictures) at info@peelscrapmetalrecycling.com  or just bring these items to either of our locations where we can quickly tell you what they are made of and what their scrap value would be.

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.

Innovative Solutions Right in Our Own Back Yard

It turns out that an Ontario Company, Environmental Waste International (EWS), based in Ajax, took over the development of the reverse polymerization process in 1992. The original work had actually begun about 12 years earlier and the knowledge acquired allowed EWS to commercialize the process for a number of different applications including used vehicle tires but also medical waste, food waste and biological wastewater sterilization.

Microwave Technology—Not Just For Cooking

The process uses microwave energy to break apart a tire’s molecular bonds. This  process reclaims pretty much one hundred per cent of the tire’s by-products. These include steel, oil, hydrocarbon gas and carbon black (used primarily as a pigment and reinforcement in rubber and plastic products). In contrast to traditional methods of tire recycling, this process is environmentally friendly with no stack emissions or landfill waste and is also designed to use the gases collected as fuel to power the operation and make it energy self-sufficient.

EWS actually bought the company (Ellsin Environmental Ltd.) that had contracted it to build a pilot plant. That pilot plant is located in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario and has begun using the technology. At 300,000 tires per year, it will produce 240,000 U.S. gallons of oil, 600,000 lbs of steel and 2 million pounds of carbon black. It is estimated that the larger commercial versions will process two million tires a year.

There is a great video on the Ellsin Environmental web site explaining the process (www.ellsin.com) To learn more about Environmental Waste International and to have a video tour of their Sault Ste. Marie facility, check out their website at www.ewmc.com.

Recycling Industry News

The Can Manufacturers Institute, among others, publishes a number of fun recycling facts in regard to aluminum cans. The aluminum can is  the most recycled and recyclable beverage container in the world. It is estimated that the U.S. alone recycles enough aluminum cans in a year to stretch to the moon and back at least eight times.
Last month, a well known company in the U.S., Wise Metals, opened the largest used beverage can melting facility in the world. Sitting on a 74 acre site in Alabama, the complex is named Element 13. Aluminum is the thirteenth element in the periodic table.

The facility is large enough to process 14.6 billion aluminum cans every year. Its products are used in the production of new aluminum sheet stock for use in the food and beverage industries in making new aluminum cans and containers.

Wise Metal Executives officially launch their new used aluminum can melting plant in Alabama.

End of Life Electronics Recycling At Peel

We have recently added more end- of- life electronics to the already substantial list of items we recycle. This includes: computers, printers, faxes, stereos, mobile devices & TVs too.

Next time you buy a television set or other type of appliance or gear that triggers an ‘eco fee’ with the new product and a ‘disposal fee for your old product, you can now recoup some of those costs by recycling those end-of-life electronics and appliances with us. This means your electronic scrap will not go to waste and you can be sure that it will be handled in a responsible and sustainable way.

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.

At Peel Scrap Metal Recycling, we keep a few relics from the last century around and its fun to bring them out for a look now and again. These are primarily balance beam scales which were quite commonly used in the industry at one time.

Nowadays however, most of the scales are electronic. The design of these electronic scales dates back to around 1939 when two American engineers began experimenting with electrical resistance. Their research lead to the development of something called a load cell. This is essentially a transducer which converts a weight sitting on it into an electrical signal that can be accurately measured. In our scrap metal recycling operations, we have a number of platform scales which work on this principle.

If Our Scales Aren’t Accurate, We’re In Trouble.

There are dozens of different types of industrial scales with designs based on the types of materials being weighed.

As part of doing business in this industry, commercial scales must be legally certified for trade. Beyond normal maintenance, we will shut down our scales on a regular basis and bring in a specialized crew to test the accuracy of each scale and to recertify it. This gives our customers and our company the confidence of knowing that we are always employing fair trading practices and the weights of the material we are buying and the material we are selling are accurate.

Incidentally, modern truck scales installed at large recycling facilities have the additional feature of being able to monitor and detect radiation. This is important in circumventing the problem of radioactive material moving up the supply chain as incoming feed is processed, refined and ultimately used in manufacturing.

End of Life Electronics Recycling.

We have recently added more end of life electronics to the already substantial list of items we recycle. This is good to note for those of you in the Oakville and Mississauga areas especially.

Next time you buy a television set or other type of appliance or gear that triggers an ‘eco fee’ with the new product and a ‘disposal fee for your old product, you can now recoup some of those costs by recycling those end-of-life electronics and appliances with us. This means your electronic scrap will not go to waste and you can be sure that it will be handled in a responsible and sustainable way.

 Peel Scrap Metal Recycling In The Media.

On Wednesday, March 14^th, 2012, BNN (CTV’s Business News Network) aired our interview with Andrew Bell. For those of you not familiar with Andrew, he is an Anchor Reporter and can be seen on Business Day, Commodities and The Pitch. He is also an extremely interesting, knowledgeable and gracious individual and author of Mutual Funds for Canadians for Dummies.

The interview was filmed at two of our locations in Mississauga and can be found at.
http://watch.bnn.ca/commodities/march-2012/commodities-march-14-2012/#clip637701

If you would like to comment on this, or any other topic, we would like to hear from you. Please e-mail us at info@peelscrapmetalrecycling.com

Clearly, we don’t think governments should ever be cast in the role of picking winners by either subsidizing some businesses and not others or arranging regulations to favour one group over another. More importantly perhaps, beyond the obvious compliance costs to firms, (including those that impose fixed costs, such as reporting procedures, regardless of size), the real issue with regulations is their impact on productivity.

Improving productivity is really a long term challenge and something that our governments in Canada have increasingly been attempting to address. We often hear about this in the press. In the U.K., the government’s Enterprise Strategy 2008, emphasized the role of business as a key driver of productivity growth in that country. The regulatory structure was identified as one of the principal enablers of productivity growth and the government established a framework that focused on ensuring that these policies would raise productivity by improving 5 identified drivers; competition, investment, innovation, enterprise and skills.

Pluses & Minuses

At the end of the day, regulations can have either a positive or a negative impact on productivity. On the positive side, they can protect intellectual property and reduce barriers and uncertainty to support competition, investment and innovation. On the negative side, they can divert resources from productive uses, raise barriers to entry and produce disincentives to investment and innovation.

In our neck of the woods, the concept of sustainable development has increasingly been popular with policymakers and the public at large over the past number of years. We certainly agree with this concept. However, if we really intend to keep metals, plastic, paper and other recyclables out of landfill then we need to give entrepreneurs the regulatory incentive to mine the urban landscape and to find innovative and responsible ways to return these types of materials as feedstock for the manufacturing processes which created them.

End of Life Electronics Recycling

We have recently added end of life electronics to the already substantial list of items we recycle. This is good to note for those of you in the Oakville and Mississauga areas especially.

Next time you buy a television set or other type of appliance or gear that triggers an ‘eco fee’ with the new product and a ‘disposal fee for your old product, you can now recoup some of those costs by recycling those end-of-life electronics and appliances with us. This means your electronic scrap will not go to waste and you can be sure that it will be handled in a responsible and sustainable way.

For those interested in reading the U.K. Government Enterprise Strategy 2008, it can be found at file449

Peel President Gary Dvorkin and BNN's Andrew Bell Chat about the current state of scrap metal recycling.

Peel Scrap Metal Recycling In The News

On Wednesday, March 14^th, 2012, BNN (CTV’s Business News Network) aired our interview with Andrew Bell. For those of you not familiar with Andrew, he is an Anchor Reporter and can be seen on Business Day, Commodities and The Pitch. He is also an extremely interesting, knowledgeable and gracious individual and author of Mutual Funds for Canadians for Dummies.

The interview was filmed at two of our locations in Mississauga and can be found at.

http://watch.bnn.ca/commodities/march-2012/commodities-march-14-2012/#clip637701

We will shortly be adding the link in our website.

If you would like to comment on this, or any other topic, we would like to hear from you. Please e-mail us at info@peelscrapmetalrecycling.com

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

The most important force which drives successful businesses forward is innovation. These innovations may occur as a series of small or substantial steps designed to improve efficiency and productivity. Or, it may be about creating something new by applying existing models to new markets. The constant objective, however, is to produce a better result.

Innovation & Sustainability Now Go Hand In Hand

And most recently a new wrinkle has been added to the quest for better results, and that is the notion of sustainability. What this means to a lot of businesses is that any measures put into place to create a more productive state, need to also take into account  the amount and type of resources being used to achieve these results. In other words to produce the best result possible in the most efficient and beneficial way possible.

So how do we kickstart innovation in today’s world? We would argue that given the focus on sustainable solutions many companies have already or will soon fundamentally redesign and repurpose their businesses around models that take into account these new realities, including those of their consumer base and the level of scrutiny made possible by the Internet.

Nike Just Did It.

One of the best examples of this is Nike. It grew into a very successful company, with very little in the way of sustainable innovation powering its growth. As a result it virtually became a pariah at one point and was soundly criticized in the media for many of its business practices. But being a smart company, Nike realized that it would have to rethink itself and it rebuilt itself around more sustainable practices.  Today, 20 years later, it is again on top of its game but in a totally different and much more sustainable and responsible way. Recently the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed Nike’s Vice President of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Hannah Jones, about this turnaround.

Interestingly, Ms. Jones explained that the key to their success was that Nike was able to discover the linkage between sustainability and innovation.

Far from impeding growth or simply being considered as a necessary cost to mitigate risk, Nike’s focus on sustainability actually triggered a different way of thinking. It fundamentally redesigned their business by forcing them to add a new dimension to all aspects of their company.

By focusing on sustainability, they went from being on the defensive, because of the image problems they created, to being a powerful, sustainable and socially responsible operation. They became transparent and environmentally friendly in a way that their stakeholders were demanding from them. And because they did, their customers responded positively and have continued to support them.

For those interested in hearing this interview with Hannah Jones, a podcast is available on the CBC website free.

Episode Four: Re-Industrializing the Planet. Dan Tapscott is the interviewer.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2195153986

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

It wasn’t just metals that were recycled. Along the way processes were developed like those to recycle paper, to make bricks out of ash and dust and to turn rags into wool.

Recycling In Wartime

With the dawn of the industrial revolution, there was, of course, renewed interest in metal recycling as resources were in short supply. During the periods of World War I and World War II, governments all around the world launched marketing campaigns to collect as much metal as could be salvaged to support the war efforts.

At the same time, scrap metal recycling became one of the go-to-industries for immigrants to North America (and other parts of the World) from Eastern Europe. They became peddlers. It didn’t require a lot to get started or require the language and technical sophistication of some other types of work.

These immigrants, however, saw the future of the scrap metal industry and founded companies that grew and prospered for generations. They understood what John Seabrook describes in his article “American Scrap” in the New Yorker as the “fundamental truth”. That truth is that all metal that has ever existed in the world still exists and always will exist. The challenge is to see that it is renewed by recycling it in a way that is efficient in terms of both energy and waste.

Recycling Today

Nowadays, there are mergers and acquisitions involving many of these intergenerational companies which have created large industrial facilities rivaling the scale of other complex industries. They are led by a new breed of young and well-educated business people who also understand the “fundamental truth.” At the same time and alongside the complications of global trade and the movement of scrap metal, their education and resources are enabling them to apply new technologies and innovations within the framework of the many sophisticated technical, environmental and business policies and practices which are now in play.

Our Relatively Short History

Our 20 plus year history at Peel Scrap Metal has followed the traditional developmental path through generations. We understand the fundamental truth as reflected in our tag line New Life For Old Metals. What makes us rather unique in the recycling industry is our desire to work with our customers on an individual basis and bring our industry into the community to make metal recycling both accessible to and rewarding for individuals, the trades (construction, renovation, electrical and plumbing) and industry at large.

Our Best Wishes At This Wonderful Time Of Year

Over this Holiday Season, we would like to extend our very best wishes to you and yours for good health and happiness and prosperity, now and throughout the New Year.

For those planning to visit us over the holidays, both our Mississauga and Oakville warehouses will be closed on Monday, December 26^th, Tuesday, December 27^th and Monday,  January 2^nd

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.

To make matters worse, the cooling effect of all those CO2 emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere combined with lower levels of solar activity have conspired to keep this stuff up there longer.

An artist rendering of the current space junk debris field surrounding the earth. Kinda scary.

Tons And Tons Of Free Floating Scrap Metal.

A US military unit currently tracks about 22,000 pieces. Estimates are that there may be another 500,000 particles ranging in size from 1 to 10 cms and perhaps millions more under 1 cm. These are travelling at speeds of up to 28,200 kms/hr which makes even the smallest particles very dangerous projectiles for manned spacecraft and active satellites.

Moreover, with every collision the smaller pieces that break out significantly increases the amount of debris in space. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of further collisions. This is actually called the Kessler Syndrome, named after Donald Kessler the former head of NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office.

To underscore this, just two collisions in recent history doubled the number of fragments in the Earth’s orbit. The first was a decision by the Chinese government in 2007 to smash a decommissioned weather satellite with an anti-satellite weapon. The second in 2009 involved a collision over Siberia of an active American satellite with a defunct Russian satellite.

The question of what to do about all of this space debris is sadly lacking any real answers. For example, there is no legal framework to allow one country to collect another’s debris and no coordinated effort to manage the problem by assigning responsibility to both governments and industry.

Russian farmers with a piece of 'space junk' that landed in their field.

The Phoenix Program

In the meantime, there is also no shortage of imagination among those looking at ways and means of “remediation.” The US Department of Defense, working under the name of the Phoenix Program, has been looking at ways to re-purpose some of this stuff in space. Other proposals envision the deployment of large nets to catch the debris, firing harpoons into decommissioned satellites and bringing them back to earth, robotic spacecraft with capture technologies and even nudging some of the debris off course using the photons in laser beams.

Certainly, we have to come to grips with this problem. While it may not be totally relevant in our generation there will be a whole new aspect to scrap metal recycling at some point in the future.

If you are interested in finding out more about scrap metal in space, check out the article: Scrap Metal Dealers Live Of Falling Rockets
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/articles/eav041902.shtml

Oakville Progress Report

Pleased to report that business in our newly opened Oakville warehouse (1150 South Service Road West) is building nicely. The people and businesses of Oakville, Burlington and West Mississauga are finding us with more and more frequency.

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

Sadly, the art gallery is not in the financial position to provide sufficient insurance protection for its assets. Very few of these types of  thefts, which are occurring on a world wide basis, are ever solved since the sculptures are usually destroyed and then sold for scrap metal. The AP article quotes Noah Charney of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art as saying that “when art is destroyed…that is an irrevocable attack on beauty, culture and civilization.” True indeed.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1075560

http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/10/26/copper-thieves-stealing-sa-s-bronze-art

Art & Architecture Are At Risk Everywhere.

Bishop's Palace In Lincoln, where the lead roof was stolen and sold for scrap.

At the time of writing, October 27th, 2011, the Telegraph in the U.K. headlined, “Metal theft epidemic one of the biggest threats to UK’s heritage.” The article was prompted by thieves who had stolen the roof from the historic Bishop’s Palace in Lincoln, “one of the most significant medieval ecclesiastical ruins in Britain.” The article written by Andrew Hough and David Millward goes on to cite a number of other examples and notes that the problem is so severe that critical funding for maintenance at some of these sites has had to be diverted for extra security.

http://tinyurl.com/3q3dqox

Metal theft is always problematic and increasingly we are seeing reports of various incidents in the news. Again just this month, for example, there was an entire bridge torched, dismantled and sold for scrap in North Beaver Township in western Pennsylvania. Not the first bridge, incidentally. Perhaps the most notorious was a 200 ton bridge that was stolen overnight in Khabarovsk in eastern Russia in 2008.

Where infrastructure is involved, it is particularly dangerous as it can affect transportation systems, hospitals, the electrical grid and the safety and health of entire communities.

The Scrap Metal Industry Can Also Be Victims

There are other serious concerns and we have touched on several of these in a previous blog entitled. ‘Scrap Metal Theft…The Unintended Consequences of Good Fortune’. As noted in that blog, the scrap metal  industry itself, as a repository of metals, is often a convenient target for these crimes.

The scrap metal industry has long been actively engaged in trying to reduce the problem of metal theft. Along with other stakeholders, we have focused on prevention and more aggressive prosecution of these crimes.

In North America, an interactive theft reporting system has been established by CARI (the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries) and ISRI (the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries) in the United States. Reports of stolen material can be posted at www.scraptheftalert.com From there bulletins are sent out. Once we are aware, our buyers can be watchful and will have specific contact information in the event that stolen material is brought to their yard.

It is a responsible and effective system. Here is an example from a few years ago where we were alerted by a metal theft bulletin and it ultimately resulted in arrests.

http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=1206859

For more information on Jim Murray and Onwords & Upwords visit
http://www.onandup.ca

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

Metal Codes Facilitate Global Metal Trade

Scrap metal also has codes attached to it and these are largely unknown to our customers. Since scrap metal, like any commodity, needs to be traded interchangeably, a basic set of standards is required to enable buyers and sellers to negotiate in both the domestic and global marketplaces. There also needs to be a standardized terminology for each of the different commodity grades.

You can imagine, for example, how difficult it would be for a trader in North America to arrange a sale of scrap metal in Asia without standards and terminology that were common to both buyer and seller. It would be chaotic.

The industry standard for this has long been provided by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). While the alchemy symbols would not be sufficient given all the various grades of metals that are traded, they have chosen some very interesting codes. Here are some examples:

The complete Scrap Specification Circular can be found on the ISRI website in the commodities section of their Program & Services. It is reviewed on a regular basis and also includes specifications for glass, plastic, paper, tire and electronic scrap. The website address is http://www.ISRI.org

For those fully engaged in the scrap metal business, the ISRI scrap metal specifications provide the means to upgrade their material to the point where it is saleable by specific grade. In fact, we have used some of these descriptions on our web site in the Materials We Buy section for this very reason i.e. to allow our customers to upgrade their material and thereby increase its value.

Anything we can do to inform customers about how they can improve their return is part of what we do. It is better for them and it is better for us too as it reduces the time and cost involved in handling, sorting, grading and processing material. It’s all in aid of returning the benefit to those who want to take their material to the next level.

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.

Making Your Own Way In A Volatile Economy.

Invariably when these market conditions unfold, there is a noticeable uptick in enquiries from our customers wondering what is going on and whether they would be better off to hold on to their material and wait until prices improve.

This time these questions are really difficult to answer since the volatility is largely due to investor nervousness or lack of investor confidence. That nervousness is based on the enormous uncertainties around the world involving the extent of government debt in Europe and the U.S., the exposure to it of financial institutions, slowing growth in China and the perceived lack of commitment among stakeholders to make the hard decisions necessary to re-stabilize economies around the world.

Unfortunately, Rolling Over And Playing Dead Is Not A Good Option.

This is exactly the pattern of behaviour that many companies exhibit at the beginning of a new cycle. If we don’t move things along by consuming and trading then the voices of doom and gloom become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This can cause prices to weaken further. It can also cause unemployment to continue rising. And because production must precede consumption (and there will be less production as companies hold off on investment in plants, people and equipment), there will ultimately be less goods and services available for everyone.

Life And Business Are Always Going To Come With Risk.

We started Peel Scrap Metal during the recession of the early 1990s believing that there are always opportunities and if we could build the kind of business that could work in tough times, we would learn some important lessons. And we did. During the last downturn in 2008/2009, we were busy installing and building our wire processing chopping line so that we could hit the ground running when things turned around. Now we have opened our new location in Oakville at the beginning of this new cycle.

Yes, it’s a calculated risk. But it’s one that’s based on the cyclical nature of economic trends.

It’s True That There Are No Guarantees In Life.

For those who are asking, we believe that you have to work hard to keep your feet on the ground and the ball moving forward. And you have to listen to your gut. Our gut tells us that there is a bit of chaos in the market, but historically these periods do not last. At the same time our gut tells us that it’s the resilience and collective spirit of people, both business owners and individual consumers who want to effect change, that invariably brings change about.

Solar Roadways News.

On a positive note, we were delighted to learn that Solar Roadways Incorporated, a company we told you about in a previous post, has successfully completed Phase I of their Small Business Innovative Research Contract and have been awarded a follow-up Phase II contract by the Federal Highway Administration. We are looking forward to seeing where this takes them.

To find out more about Solar Roadways, visit. http://solarroadways.com/main.html