ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601110137
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
Recycling has become a national obsession. From teaching kids not to pitch soda cans in the garbage, to Fortune 500 companies searching for new uses for industrial waste, everybody's doing it.
And, according to Jim Conner, general manager of Cycle Systems Inc. in Roanoke, the recycling craze won't abate in 1996.
"It's still the thing to do. We still want people to recycle," Conner said. "We're looking for [the] next year to be a steady growth year."
Conner aims to increase the volume of glass, metals, paper and plastic the company handles by 25 percent, to 200,000 tons this year. Part of that growth will come from expanding services the Roanoke-based company provides in the Lynchburg and Richmond areas, he said.
But unlike other environmental businesses that are driven by federal and state regulations, recycling is subject to the vagaries of the market.
For instance, Conner said, he was selling cardboard last year for $200 per ton, much of it overseas. Then the price of using virgin material met that for recycled paper, and the price dropped to $30 a ton.
In plastics, the market has been slow in developing products that can use recycled material, and the supply just keeps piling up, Conner said. He thinks, though, that 1996 will see great strides in product development for recycled plastic.
Others who work in the environmental sector, such as lawyers, consultants and engineers, are more subject to political and regulatory winds.
"I see a swing back to a more moderate stand on the environment," said Deb Oyler, president of Environmental Directions Inc.
Last year, her company lost business as a result of changes in the state's approach to cleaning up polluted sites where underground storage tanks had leaked.
Gov. George Allen's administration made other policy changes, too, she said, and some clients held off on pollution controls. "People wanted to see if they could get by with things," Oyler said.
But most businesses don't want to go back to standards of four or five years ago, she said. "They feel they've made some inroads, and they want to continue that."
Oyler, who employs 17 people, plans to expand her laboratory services in 1996 to accommodate government and private-sector research grants. She also plans to set up a satellite office in east Tennessee, and continue looking for work in the Pacific Rim and South American markets.
Another Roanoke-based environmental consulting firm, ETS International, is expanding to markets overseas.
"There's this whole thing about helping the universe ... which also affords companies like ETS a great marketing opportunity," said John Mycock, the company's executive vice president.
Specializing in air pollution controls, ETS has tapped into the Taiwanese and Korean markets where it worked with a local company to customize smokestack baghouses, which trap pollutants.
ETS also has a short-term federal government contract to bring engineers from 13 countries to Roanoke for training in air pollution control technologies, Mycock said.
Last year, ETS acquired two other companies, diversifying its expertise and services. As for 1996, Mycock said that ETS is "looking at several prospective candidates [for acquisition], but we have nothing firm."
ETS employs 80 people in Roanoke, and about 160 more in its other offices, in Philadelphia and Richmond.
Charles Williams, an environmental lawyer with Gentry, Locke, Rakes & Moore, said some of his clients are interested in a new state program for "voluntary remediation." This is more flexible than what's required under other federal and state laws, and could result in more companies cleaning up contamination.
Williams predicts that 1996 will see more environmental litigation between private entities looking to recover cleanup costs.
He also predicts that activist groups will become players in many local environmental issues "because they've been too quiet around here too long."
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB