On Thursday, December 10th, over 130 passionate recyclers gathered at the McMenamins Kennedy School in Northeast Portland to examine the value of recycling in today's declining commodity markets. David Allaway of the Oregon DEQ kicked off the event with an in-depth commentary of John Tierney's early fall New York Times criticism of today's recycling efforts. David provided examples of where Tierney missed the mark and where he hit the nail on the head. We then heard from Jerry Powell of Resource Recycling Magazine and Steve Frank from Pioneer Recycling about the state of the commodity markets today, and the likely trajectory markets will likely take in the near to mid-term. 

After a networking lunch sponsored by Republic Services, the audience heard presentations from Risa Buck of Recology Ashland, Sarah Grimm of Lane County, and David McCall of Tillamook County. Each of the speakers provided real life examples of how their counties, communities, and companies are promoting recycling in today's market place. Attendees then worked together in small groups to answer questions about communicating the value of recycling beyond the bottom line, with the goal of contributing to the development of a toolkit that anyone promoting recycling can use to demonstrate the importance of recycling, particularly when monetary incentives are not as great as they once were.

The event concluded with a networking Happy Hour sponsored by Waste Connections. 

AOR will follow up with attendees to provide them with an opportunity to weigh-in on the questions that other participants answered, and anyone who attended the forum who would like to sit on an ad-hoc committee to work on the communication toolkit should contact Amy at the AOR office.

Thanks again to our forum sponsors!