JR Afternoon with Chris Renwick
America Recycles Day!
All right, 800-859-0957-800-859-0WJR. Today is America Recycles Day. And look, I think that it's fair to be good stewards of our environment whenever possible. And that includes, look, just separate your papers from the rest of your garbage. You know, some people, they go the whole way, they've got compost. The realities are, we are all very busy and just like when you do your laundry, you separate the whites from the colors, just do the same with your garbage. If you've got plastic, put it aside. If you've got paper, put it aside. It's very simple and it really can go a long way. Tom Emrick is the COO of Shoupon Recycling and joins me this afternoon. Tom, it's great to have you back on. Thank you. It's nice to be back. So-- Go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, I was just listening to your lead in there and I thought, comes to mind, it can never do wrong by doing the right thing when it comes to recycling. That's kind of what it boils down to. Yeah. In my opinion. No, and I think it's exactly it. And it doesn't take a lot. It doesn't take a lot of effort or energy, but it really can go a long way. And when it comes to recycling, for example, plastics, they've been able to take old water bottles, old, whatever, turn them into clothes, turn them into shoes, turn them into whatever. And we just keep that type of system going. It goes a long way into helping our environment and it goes a long way to, quite frankly, cutting down on the use of a lot of these things. Yeah, 100%. Recycling-- or the plastics industry has done a phenomenal job, increasing the recycling footprint over the years, the aluminum industry, which is where we're in both areas, but we're very heavily involved in aluminum. You're reducing greenhouse gases with every container, every plastic bottle that gets recycled. So we have an exciting story to tell in our industry, and it's actually quite gratifying to see that there's a day that's being signaled out to kind of call attention, draw attention to a very, very worthy effort that we can all do a better job at. So give me kind of an idea of what happens when the recycling truck comes, picks everything up. What's the process and how does Shupan get involved? So well, there's-- Shupan does not get involved with when the recycling truck picks up curbside recycling per se unless we're buying the material at the other end. So when a recycling truck picks up-- excuse me-- recycling truck picks up your recycles at curbside. They're going to take it back to a mirth operation/turor recycling facility. They dump it, they separate the containers, and they'll bail the aluminum with aluminum and paper with paper and cardboard. If there's glass of the program, they'll separate that out. And as a industry, we've gotten very, very more sophisticated, much for technology over the years to where we can make a pretty good end product, and what we might do if it's aluminum cans or other little scrap while we might buy that material, and then we set it to a mill for it to be melted and recycled. Our primary footprint in Michigan where people would know us the most is through the deposit system, where we hand all large percentage of all deposit containers in the state of Michigan. Yeah, and getting those back in a timely manner I know is something that you guys have dealt with for a while. Oh, yeah. It's been an interesting couple of years, and I-- you know, if you're listening to some scene billboards around the state that say take 'em back, since the pandemic, we've had a pretty serious decline in the number of deposit containers that have been returned in Michigan. So we are working with the state with a relatively aggressive-- probably too aggressive a term, but a pretty comprehensive ad campaign to kind of remind Michiganers that it's important to take your bottles of cans back to your deers or your local retailer, and let's get those things picked up, recycled, and do the right thing by our environment. When it comes to the rules and regulations that are in place, whether it's at the federal or state level, how does that impact our recycling habits? Well, that's kind of a-- at the federal level, there really isn't many-- there's not much of a recycling legislation, but usually it ends up at the state level. In some states, on mandates, certain things can't go to the landfills, and others do not. Michigan has very few regulations. The biggest piece of legislation in Michigan that-- the earmarked, if you will, for-- towards recycling really is our deposit law. Well, look, I think you put it best-- doing the good thing is never a bad idea, and I think that we all can take those little steps in making sure that we're keeping our environment, that we are being environmentalists when it comes to making sure that these things get to where they need to go in a proper way, and used efficiently after that. Tom Emmerich with Shoe Pan, thank you so much. Really appreciate the time. Thank you. Appreciate it. You have a great day. You do the same. 800-859-0957, 800-859-0WJR. I wasn't actually even totally going to bring this up, but I've got a caller on the line that Brian says I need to get to. It's Granny G. in Southfield. Hello. Who is this? Hi. Hi. Hi, Grandma Taylor. How are you? OK. I had to repeat my name to name the tell who it was. I didn't know it first, but my producer says you've got to take this call. But you asked when I said Brian was calling. And what did you tell him? I said I was calling. I wish you had the birthday on the air. Well, that's very nice. Thank you. This is Grandma Taylor. This is one of my wife's grandmas. So a loyal listener. You're the one. Thank you. That's very nice. Thank you. Thank you too. We'll see you soon. Thank you. OK. All right. We'll talk to you later. Well, that's very nice. This is my birthday's tomorrow. And I'm not much of a birthday guy. My wife's a big. She loves birthdays. She does all the birthday stuff. And she, you know, she said, what do you want to do? I'm like, nothing. I'm going to be 36 with this nothing. But I will say what is fun is the birthday stuff for my kids. Like they're excited now for my birthday. And they're excited for the cake and the ice cream and all that stuff. But you ready for this story? So the kids asked me, what do I want for my birthday? I said, all I want for my birthday is for you to make me a birthday card. Draw a picture of us, color it, write happy birthday, six and two, right? Just scribble some stuff on a piece of paper. It's fine. But Jake says to me, he says, Dad, what do you want for your birthday? I said, just make me a card. He said, do you like Michigan? And I said, I do like Michigan. Yes, I do. He said, do you like to play checkers? I said, of course, sure, I love to play checkers. He said, would you like to play Michigan checkers? And I said, you know what, that would be a lot of fun. I should ask for that for my birthday. And he's like, yeah, you should. Yeah, you should ask for that for your birthday. And I was like, all right, I'll, I'll, I'd like a Michigan checker set. And he's like, OK, it's great. So all the stuff that I, as a, you know, jaded middle-aged 30-man don't care about. Now it's fun for them, which is fun for me. So that's cool. All right, we'll take a break.
November 15, 2024 ~ Chris talks with Tom Emmerich, the COO of Schupan Recycling about 'America Recycles Day' and why it's important for us, and future generations, to recycle whatever we can in the proper manner!