as the economy continues to tumble - recycling takes a hit

Just months after riding an incredible high, the recycling market has tanked almost in lockstep with the global economic meltdown. As consumer demand for autos, appliances and new homes dropped, so did the steel and pulp mills' demand for scrap, paper and other recyclables.

Cardboard that sold for about $135 a ton in September is now going for $35 a ton. Plastic bottles have fallen from 25 cents to 2 cents a pound. Aluminum cans dropped nearly half to about 40 cents a pound, and scrap metal tumbled from $525 a gross ton to about $100.

"It's never gone from so good to so bad so fast," said Marty Davis, president of Midland Davis Corp. in Pekin, Ill., who has been in the recycling business since 1975.

The turnaround caught everyone off guard, said Steven Kowalsky, president of Empire Recycling in Utica, N.Y.

"Nobody saw it coming. Absolutely nobody," Kowalsky said. "Even the biggest players didn't see it coming."

At the height of the market just months ago, customers lined the street outside Kowalsky's business, hoping to hawk scrap to pay rising food and fuel costs.

"That's not happening anymore," he said.

"I don't know if we are at the bottom yet, bouncing along the bottom or we have new lows to achieve," Garino said.

The market's not likely to bounce back until the economy improves. Kowalsky estimates it could be several years.

"It's just time to pull in your horns and maintain what you have and try to survive until 2010," he said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/07/recycling-goes-from-boom_n_149134.html