SIC 5093 Scrap and Waste Materials

SIC 5093

This industry category includes establishments primarily engaged in assembling, breaking up, sorting and distributing scrap and waste materials. The industry also includes auto wreckers engaged in dismantling automobiles for scrap. Those establishments engaged in dismantling cars for the purpose of selling secondhand parts are classified under SIC 5015: Motor Vehicle Parts—Used.

NAICS CODE(S)

421930

Recyclable Material Wholesalers

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

The United States generates more than 229 million tons of municipal waste annually, distributed as follows: paper and cardboard, 36 percent; yard trimmings, 12 percent; metals and plastics, 19 percent; and other waste, 33 percent. In addition to collection, the scrap and waste materials industry operates the sorting and recycling services that help to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills. To that end, it also processes for wholesale distribution a wide variety of materials including bags and bottles, fur cuttings and scraps, nonferrous metal wastes and scraps, and rubber scraps. The industry's primary output, however, has been wastepaper and ferrous scrap metals such as iron and steel.

In 2001, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that the total municipal solid waste generation of 229 million tons before recycling consisted of yard trimmings 12.2 percent; wood 5.7 percent; rubber, leather and textiles 7.1 percent; plastics 11.1 percent; metals 7.9 percent; glass 5.5 percent; food scraps 11.4 percent; paper 35.7 percent; and other was 3.4 percent.

There were a total of 8,133 establishments engaged in the scrap and waste materials industry in 2003. Combined they generated approximately $20.1 billion. There were about 75,853 workers with approximately nine employees per establishment. The average sales were about $2.90 million per establishment. States with the highest number of businesses in this industry were California with 1,053 establishments, Texas with 563, New York with 505, Pennsylvania with 459, and Ohio numbered 437.

ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE

Scrap Wastepaper

Wastepaper processors use large balers to bundle compressed wastepaper—such as newsprint, cardboard, or office paper—for shipment to paper mills for recycling. Recycling efforts by the scrap industry increased substantially during the final decades of the twentieth century, recovering 45 percent—45 million tons—of all paper and paperboard used nationally in 1997; recycled office paper alone increased to 48 percent, up from just 15 percent in 1990. The industry set a goal to recycle 50 percent of all paper, and 65 percent of office paper by the year 2000.

Export markets increased by 285 percent from the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, and prices for recycled paper products soared in 1995, but fell again in 1996. A subsequent no-growth forecast for the entire paper industry late in 1998 led producers to forestall plans to increase plant capacity for recycling of paper products as the 1990s drew to a close. At that time the American Forest & Paper Association projected a continued 2.1 percent annual growth for recovered fiber, which reflected a 75 percent decline from previous growth. Revised projections called for recycled paper to flatten and stabilize at 36 percent of total product, with printing and writing paper down at 10...