August 26, 2025 • 30 mins
Anthony Iovine is the sales manager for Gateway Products Recycling, a family-owned paper recycling company, in business for over 30 years in Ohio and Pennsylvania. When asked why he loves his job, he says it's "waking up every day to save the planet - one bale of cardboard at a time."
Paper recycling has been around since about 1031 AD, and is one of recycling’s success stories. The U.S. recycles around 46 million tons of fiber annually, according to the American Forest and Paper Association. In this episode, Anthony busts a few recycling myths. He gives us an insider's look at the paper recycling industry, the role of intermediate processors like himself who collect, grade, and bale paper before shipping it to domestic mills to be made into new products. Tony also shares how the industry has changed over the years, the impact of China's National Sword policy, and the importance of paper recycling in a world of growing consumption and dwindling resources.
Gateway collects source-separated paper, cardboard, plastic, and metals from commercial customers - ranging from food manufacturers and grocery stores to stadiums and distribution centers. This sorted material yields cleaner, more valuable recyclables, enabling Gateway to move between 15,000 and 18,000 tons of materials through its plants each month, with the final stop being mills that make recycled boxes, gypsum board, cellulose insulation, and tissue products. All these efforts help keep forests standing, while protecting ecosystems, water and energy. Listen and hear how Gateway can turn your workplace waste back into resources.
Learn More:
About Gateway Recycling
American Forest and Paper Association
Plastic China Documentary
China's National Sword Policy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Diane Bickett (00:04):
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, a podcast for
the eco curious in NortheastOhio.
My name is Diane Bickett and myproducer is Greg Rotuno.
Together we speak with localsustainability leaders and
invite you to connect, learn andlive with our community and
planet in mind.
Hello friends, summer iswinding down.
(00:25):
I hope you've been having funin the land I sure have.
It's August already and kids areback in school, and today we
are too, because today onEcoSpeak CLE, we're going to
learn about paper recycling withAnthony Iovine, who is a sales
manager for Gateway ProductsRecycling, a family-owned
recycling company in businessfor over 30 years in Ohio and
(00:47):
Pennsylvania.
Every now and again we do anepisode on how things work, and
I assure you that you will learnsome new things today about an
industry that's been around fora long long time Since the year
1031 AD, apparently, accordingto Google and it's one of
recycling success stories.
The United States recyclesaround 46 million tons of fiber
(01:11):
annually, according to theAmerican Forest and Paper
Association.
Please stay with us and learnwhat happens to all that paper
once it leaves the curb or theloading dock and the role of
intermediate processors likeAnthony and the importance of
paper recovery.
Like Anthony and the importanceof paper recovery in a world of
increasing consumption anddecreasing resources.
Welcome, anthony.
Anthony Iovine (01:31):
Thanks so much for having us.
Diane Bickett (01:32):
Thanks for joining us.
I remember the day we met itwas probably like 15 years ago.
You came into the office tointroduce yourself and I
remember that you were just sohigh energy and I remember
thinking, man, this guy loveshis job and I know you still do
today.
So what do you love most aboutyour work in the recycling
(01:56):
industry?
What?
Anthony Iovine (01:56):
I love most about our job is Gateway has
been a great company to work forfor about 15 years.
Like you said, we've been doingthis for three decades now, but
every day I get to wake up andsave the planet it's kind of the
way I look at it Saving treesby going into customers and
making sure that a lot of thosecommodities aren't going into
landfills but going into ourtrailers or bins or however we
(02:18):
have it at each account andsaving trees in that manner.
Diane Bickett (02:22):
So yeah got a little bit of a green heart I'd
say and you've got a daughter tothink about, so it's important.
Anthony Iovine (02:28):
My wife's actually the biggest tree hugger
, but Paige definitely she lovesthat.
Diane Bickett (02:33):
Go Renee, that's awesome.
So what's different about yourcompany versus, like, a waste
management or a RepublicServices in terms of how, where
your place in the market and howyou handle materials?
Because you have a different,you serve a different sector,
(02:54):
right.
Anthony Iovine (02:55):
Yeah, different approach to what we do.
So both sides single-chainrecycling, or you'll hear the
word MRF Material RecoveryFacility.
Single stream recycling, oryou'll hear the word MRF
material recovery facility.
And also what we do serves agreat purpose for recycling,
just in general.
But yes, we are much differentMRF.
What they do is they get all ofthe commodities in one bin or
(03:17):
in one truck that's dropped offon the floor.
In there there will be plastic,corrugated paper, metals,
aluminum cans all in one compacttruck or one bin.
They'll dump it on their floorand then they'll have sorters at
their facility, whether it'smanual or optical sorters, or
machines that float out thecardboard or float out the paper
(03:37):
, or magnets that take out themetals.
What we're a little bitdifferent is we actually coach
our customers to separate thematerial at the actual point of
generation.
Diane Bickett (03:50):
Source separated is the term.
Anthony Iovine (03:51):
Yes, source separated, and that allows us to
have good, clean material comeinto our facility, which has
allowed us to grow the way wehave.
Diane Bickett (04:01):
And so the single stream recyclers like Republic
and Waste Management and Rumpkeserve the residential sector, so
they're the ones picking thematerial from the recycling bins
off the curb.
Correct?
You're serving mainlycommercial customers such as
Commercial.
Anthony Iovine (04:18):
Yes, so we do a lot in the food industry.
So food manufacturers, grocerystores, also we do distribution
centers, manufacturers, I meanone of my customers even
manufactures pillows.
Greg Rotuno (04:31):
Oh really.
Anthony Iovine (04:32):
We do also stadiums.
We do municipality too as well.
But it'd be if it was actuallysource separated beforehand From
an office or whatever.
From an office, yeah, eventhrift stores.
Thrift stores actually recyclequite a bit.
Diane Bickett (04:46):
Well, you're probably going after cardboard,
so they probably have a lot ofthat material.
You toured me through yourplant back in May, which was
great because I hadn't been herein many, many years.
Anthony Iovine (04:57):
I could see your wheels turning again.
Wheels turning.
Took you back 15 years ago.
Diane Bickett (05:02):
Well, your facility is here in, where some
of our listeners may have gottena keg back in the day because
it's in the former house of LaRose beverage distributor.
But the one thing you wanted toreally get across was there
were some myths about recyclingyou wanted to bust, so why don't
(05:22):
we just dive right in and startthere?
Anthony Iovine (05:24):
So anybody that I meet, whenever I meet them and
they ask me what I do for aliving, I tell them I'm in the
recycling industry.
I work for Gateway Recyclingand the first thing they ask me
every single time is is stuffreally recycled?
Oh gosh, I know, and the answeris yes.
What we bring in on Gateway'send, we coach our customers to
let them know what we can takeand can't take.
(05:47):
There is wish recycling outthere where you know you throw
something into a container andyou're hoping and wishing that
it can be recycled, butsometimes it doesn't get to its
destination.
The biggest thing I would sayis, for those who do have those
questions, you can talk to a lotof recyclers because there's a
lot in the marketplace.
Those who do have thosequestions you can talk to a lot
of recyclers because there's alot in the marketplace.
But also you can talk to citiesand the counties to ask them
(06:08):
where certain materials go.
Doreen Shriver, over at theCuyahoga Solid Waste Management
District they does a tremendousjob with their website letting
you know where you can sendmaterials to that are hard to
recycle.
But you can recycle a lot ofthese commodities.
It just takes a little bitextra, sometimes research, to
(06:29):
get them there.
Diane Bickett (06:31):
And so it's important to follow the rules of
your service provider, ofcourse.
I think when I first started inthe recycling industry as a
government sector person, it was1990 and everything was source
separated.
Curbside recycling didn'tbecome single stream or
(06:53):
commingled until maybe 10 or 12years later.
So early on the material wascollected.
It was more expensive tocollect because you'd have to
have a paper truck go around andthen you'd have to have a metal
truck to come by and get thecans, but it was cleaner so it
probably sold for a higheramount of money, yes, and there
(07:17):
wasn't that added step ofcleaning it up.
But the convenience factor hashelped us get to a really high
recycling rate of like 67%nationwide.
So I think there's a place forboth things in there.
You walked me around the plantand there were just all these
different paper piles, differentpaper grades.
You want to talk about how yougrade and sort the fiber that
(07:39):
comes in.
Anthony Iovine (07:40):
Yeah, so when I started 15 years ago I thought
there was really only like threepaper grades, maybe four paper
grades.
I thought it was just somecardboard and newspaper and
office waste was the main gradesand that's all there really was
.
There's actually like 56different paper grades and we'll
get into them all in thisepisode.
But each different paper gradehas its purpose and use and also
(08:01):
has its purpose for differentprice points.
So, like our sales team reallyneeds to know exactly what
they're dealing with to get itto the right destination, the
majority of the corrugated thatwe get we send it to be turned
back into cardboard.
Also, it can go into gypsumboard too.
So, like drywall, Our newspaperthat we get in, we bring it in.
(08:24):
You saw how we bail it and thenwe send it out through full
truckloads by semi-trailer todestinations that will make it
back into newspaper, but it'llalso make it back into
installation.
One other thing that newspaperdoes is it also goes into a
hydro seed.
So if you ever see wheneverthey do construction on a bridge
, on a freeway, they tear up allthe grass and everything Then
(08:47):
you see a magical blue and greenpage.
Diane Bickett (08:49):
Oh, they're spraying that stuff out.
That holds the seeds in place.
Anthony Iovine (08:51):
So the cellulose part of that is actually
newspaper.
Okay, so office waste that weget in from printers or we get
it in from downtown sky rises.
We bring that in, we bail it,we ship it out to full
truckloads to end users thatwill make it into away from home
products.
So those would be like facialtissue, toilet paper, that would
(09:15):
also be hand towels, napkins alot of the material that we get
in on even on our shredding side.
We have a document instructionthat Angie Wade and Tiffany
Julian they head up.
They bring in a lot of shreddedmaterial and all that material
is considered as office paperand is sold to tissue mills.
Diane Bickett (09:37):
And some of the really, really high quality
stuff is just pure white paperfrom printers and stuff.
Anthony Iovine (09:43):
Yeah, we'll get, like envelope manufacturers or
something we deal with a lot and, like you're saying, printers
as well.
We will get rolls of paper thatis just completely pristine and
white, and what we'll do fromthere is a lot of times if we
can sell it as is, we'll sellthem as is, but if we need to
cut them up, we'll send it toend users and it'll be the
highest dollar grade that wehave at our facility outside of
(10:03):
aluminum.
Diane Bickett (10:04):
Okay, so you bring how many types of grades
of paper here and then what doyou do with it?
Are you doing some sorting andbailing here before it ships out
?
Anthony Iovine (10:13):
Mainly, like we said, we're source separated
recyclers, so what we want to dois get those commodities to us
already sorted.
When it comes to our facility,what we'll do is we have bailers
at our facility, which arelarge machines that make it pack
into what looks like a hugebrick of paper and then,
whenever we get that huge brickof paper, it's called a bale.
(10:34):
Those bales are all accumulatedin our bale room and we'll ship
them out in full truckloadsfrom there.
Okay, we move anywhere from15,000 to 18,000 tons a month.
Diane Bickett (10:46):
Wow.
So, how many?
Just to illustrate how manysemis would that be?
Anthony Iovine (10:58):
So one semi is usually 20 tons, okay.
So you're looking at you knowit could be anywhere from 20 to
30 loads out of our facilities aday.
Diane Bickett (11:04):
Wow, that's a lot .
Anthony Iovine (11:05):
Yeah, so we have Cleveland, Toledo and
Pittsburgh.
Diane Bickett (11:07):
Okay, how many people work in the Cleveland
operation?
Anthony Iovine (11:09):
The Cleveland operation we have 62.
As a company, overall we're 120.
Diane Bickett (11:14):
Okay, and your other locations are Pittsburgh
and Toledo, right?
Anthony Iovine (11:19):
Pittsburgh and Toledo, yeah, you started in
Toledo.
Diane Bickett (11:21):
You had a little story about how the owner of the
company started back in Toledo.
Anthony Iovine (11:26):
The Susser 6 family is who owns Gateway Great
family.
Tom started in the asphaltbusiness and in 1993, on the
backside of the asphalt businesswas actually a small paper
company that the asphalt companyowned company that the asphalt
company owned and at that pointhe decided, for whatever reason,
(11:47):
he wanted to lead that side ofthe company and he took over
that company and became theowner of it and his wife, cindy,
who came to work for one day,ended up spending 30 years at
the company.
She's probably one of thehardest working women females
I've ever been around in thebusiness world.
But we grew from there to thefacility that's.
(12:09):
There's a facility down theroad, about 40,000 square feet,
and we moved there in 2006.
But in 2001, we opened up inToledo.
We saw a need in Toledo for usto grow and we opened up a
facility in Toledo for us togrow and we opened up a facility
(12:30):
in Toledo and then in 2012, weopened up a facility in
Zillianople, pennsylvania.
We grew quickly out of that oneinto another facility in
Robinson Township in Pittsburgh,in the Pittsburgh area in 2016.
So all throughout that growth,tom's been really good about
listening to the sales team andlistening to what our customers
want.
And when we first started itwas just paper.
(12:52):
All we did was cardboard andpicked up bales of cardboard.
But he would ask all thesalespeople, what else is there
out there?
And that's when we got intoplastic recycling, we got into
metal recycling and also gotinto document destruction as
that as well.
We sell equipment, so balers,grinders, shredders, and we also
(13:13):
have a service team that canservice all of those units as
well.
Okay, so we were fortunate tobe able to grow the way we have.
It's family owned business.
So Tom and Sandy they joinedthe business throughout.
That, that's Tom's daughter isSandy, and then Tom's son is
Tommy.
Tommy and his wife Brittanyjoined the operation too.
(13:34):
So Tom and Ryan run theoperation side, and then on the
HR and accounting side would beSandy and would be Brittany.
Diane Bickett (13:45):
Wow.
Well, congratulations on 30years of success.
I mean, in a day where mostwaste management recycling
companies are verticallyintegrated and you know publicly
traded companies, you knowyou're competing with the
biggest, so that's awesome.
Anthony Iovine (14:02):
Yeah, when I first started it was probably a
recycler, probably about 20recyclers.
Just throughout the yearsthere's been a lot of
consolidation, whether you knowout of business or got bought or
just dissolved.
Well, we've been lucky to growthroughout it and just be doing
the right things for our company.
Diane Bickett (14:20):
Okay, with Anthony running the sales team.
Anthony Iovine (14:22):
Yay.
Diane Bickett (14:24):
I want to talk a little bit about markets.
Part of the recycling myth Ithink that we come across in the
industry is that there's nomarket for this material or it's
all going overseas.
And that's not the case forfiber, which is paper, and
cardboard, for fiber, which ispaper and cardboard.
(14:50):
Talk about the domestic andNorth American markets for all
this paper.
It used to be.
There were timber mills inCanada harvesting paper,
harvesting trees to make paper.
Now we're harvesting thatmaterial from our urban cities.
How does that look in Ohio?
What does that look like inOhio?
Anthony Iovine (15:06):
or the Midwest region.
In the Midwest region.
There's various millsthroughout the United States,
but when I first started, therewas a lot more mills.
We've seen a lot of, likeyou're saying, consolidation of
mills.
One thing that forced the paperto stay internally,
domestically, was the nationalsword that was brought down by
(15:26):
China.
And basically what that was wasChina, overnight in 2017, said
we're not taking in theserecyclables and they banned like
24 different types of plasticsor paper or corrugated that was
going into their country.
Nobody really knew why.
At the time, that was thelargest buyer in the world for
cardboard.
Diane Bickett (15:46):
Oh, really, yeah, Because they were shipping all
their stuff back in the boxes.
I mean, there was containers.
Anthony Iovine (15:51):
When I started at Gateway, there was containers
downstairs we were shipping outdaily.
China was the largest buyer inthe world for cardboard and
paper, and then India was way,way, way lower than it, but a
lot of that material was shippedoverseas.
So it's kind of like if youlost the largest buyer in the
world for something simplesupply and demand.
I mean, the supply goes throughthe roof and the pricing went
(16:13):
extremely down.
So, it was hard even at thattime to find homes for cardboard
and paper, but we've lucked outthrough the years to have great
relationships with our endusers and our buyers, that we
were able to move a lot of coreunits in that time.
Diane Bickett (16:30):
When I was still working at Cuyahoga Recycles.
There's a company that opened amill in Wapakoneta called Pratt
Industries and that was likethe first paper mill.
It was like I don't know took along time to get that thing
sited and built and I think theyjust had an expansion.
And Wabakonet is like at theIndiana border right.
(16:51):
Are you sending material there?
Are you allowed to say ifthat's one of your markets?
Anthony Iovine (16:57):
I don't know if that's one of our end markets.
It might be.
I'm not really on the sellingout the material side.
My job is to get, my team's jobis to get the material in.
We do ship a lot of stuffdomestically, though in the
United States, Like I said,exporting is kind of like
non-existent for us in regardsto paper, just because of what
happened in China.
Diane Bickett (17:19):
And you're able to find enough end users here.
Anthony Iovine (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, in the US, yes, yes, because we
have contracts with the millsthat allow us to send them X
amount of quantity per day andwhatnot.
Diane Bickett (17:32):
Good to know that the investment is still
happening and new mills arestill opening.
Anthony Iovine (17:36):
Yeah, new mills are coming on board throughout
the United States.
What happened with the NationalSword was it wasn't so much
that China did not want bales ofcardboard there, they just
didn't want dirty material there.
So a lot of what happened afterthe National Storage was
instituted was a lot of theChinese mills actually came to
(17:59):
the United States and they founddormant paper mills and they
converted them into.
If it was a tissue mill, theyconverted it into a corrugated
mill.
And what they're trying to doand what they're doing is
they're bringing in bales fromus or whoever and they're
pulping it and they're dryingthe pulp and sending the pulp
back overseas in that manner,Really To be made into boxes
(18:20):
over there.
To be made into boxes over there, because if you think about it,
when you pulp something it goesthrough all those lines and
cleans everything, so you getthe purest form of whatever
commodity that you're trying torecycle.
So they then send that back tothemselves.
Diane Bickett (18:35):
Okay, because they need those boxes over there
to ship all our.
Amazon products, exactly,exactly.
How have things changed overthe years?
I mean, it used to be thatpeople would go to a store and
buy something, so stuff wasshipped to the store location in
boxes.
Now those boxes are going topeople's homes.
(18:55):
So is it harder to get thatmaterial into your plant because
you're having to source it frommultiple locations rather than
aggregated at a retail location?
Anthony Iovine (19:07):
The one thing that I think, that's you know,
the Amazon effect has yeah, has,I think, affected our industry
a lot Because, like you'resaying, traditionally the way it
was is you buy a product at astore that came in a box.
They take that box, they put itinto a baler at their location,
they bail the material and acompany like us we come and pick
it up.
so now what happened is that allthose boxes are now going to
(19:29):
our doorsteps, right, and youhope everybody has a sustainable
heart, like all of us in thisroom, but sometimes people do
and sometimes also people don'thave the means to recycle in
their communities, because notevery community that that's in
northeast ohio or the world has,uh, recycling options that you
can actually recycle in a bin,you know.
So I think what happens is someof that material gets
(19:51):
landfilled.
So I think that's affectedvolumes.
And if you look at like thisweek, I think they actually
publicized the recycling ratesfor cardboard, for paper, and it
went from 68 down to 60.
That could be something thatcould affect that.
Diane Bickett (20:07):
Per ton.
Anthony Iovine (20:08):
No, no percent.
Diane Bickett (20:09):
Oh, percent 68%.
Anthony Iovine (20:10):
Yeah, it was 68% a year prior and then the next
year was 60%, so it's gone downa little bit and that could be
something that's certainlyaffected it.
I think one thing that's reallyaffected the industry a lot is
also paperless society.
Back in the day we used to getour news feed how we opened a
newspaper.
You'd open up a newspaper andin there you would have your
(20:32):
social media, which would be theeditorial section, and also the
cartoon section.
You didn't pull up your phoneevery five minutes to check the
score of the Cavs or theGuardians.
You had to read it in thenewspaper.
Looking at stocks you looked atthat in the USA Today and look
how the stock marks are going.
Now there's an app for that, soa lot of the newspapers have
(20:53):
been affected by that, a lotwhere we can just go to our
phone for everything these daysas opposed to opening up a
newspaper and reading a littlebit about what's going on in the
world.
Diane Bickett (21:03):
Yeah, it's tragic .
Anthony Iovine (21:05):
That also goes to the book industry, though.
No effects to books industrytextbooks.
So I'm assuming I haven't beento college in a while, but
assuming you can download thebook now, opposed to going to
the bookstore and buying thatand every single shirt that was
in the store when I was younger.
Diane Bickett (21:21):
I feel like the move to a paperless society is
affecting the things that shouldbe kept, like books and
newspapers, and instead of, youknow, printers spewing out paper
in an office setting orwhatever yeah, that's changed a
lot, like uh office, uh, thehealth care industry has changed
a lot on that end.
Anthony Iovine (21:42):
There are a lot.
There are a lot of paperless,all the contracts that we get
sent now from companies, a lotof it's docu sign, you know.
You know, opposed to printingeverything out, signing it,
faxing it back or emailing itback, it's all done
electronically now where you cansign away at it.
Diane Bickett (21:56):
So why is?
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe environmental side of things
.
We talked about what paper isbeing recycled into.
You mentioned tissue paper,newspaper, cardboard.
Obviously that process ofmaking paper from paper versus
(22:17):
paper from trees has a greatenvironmental benefit.
You're saving 17 trees per tontrees per ton yeah.
Anthony Iovine (22:34):
One ton saves 17 trees and also gets three cubic
yards out of a landfill.
So, you think about the actualtonnage and the actual yards
coming out of a landfill?
Diane Bickett (22:40):
that's very, very impactful.
Yeah, Plus 64% energy savingsand uses 80% less water.
So, as our resources diminish,that's super important.
Back in the intro I said thatthe US recycles 46 million tons
of fiber annually, and I wasgoing to try to do the math to
multiply 46 million tons by 17trees but my calculator wouldn't
(23:03):
go that high.
Greg Rotuno (23:04):
It's wild, isn't it ?
It's a lot, it's great.
Diane Bickett (23:06):
It's great.
Wouldn't go that high.
It's wild, isn't it?
It's a lot, it's great.
The thing that drives me crazyis toilet paper.
Cutting down trees in theboreal forest in Canada because
you need those really longfibers to make the really plushy
toilet paper is just such awaste and I don't think people
realize that that virgin fiberto make the high-end toilet
(23:29):
paper is coming from these oldgrowth trees in Canada, so it's
important for people to knowthat it's important to recycle.
I think paper recycling is oneof our success stories, for sure
.
Anthony Iovine (23:40):
Well, the one thing about paper recycling it
is a huge success.
You think about 60 to 68% andyou're like, why aren't we at
100%?
Well, 60% to 68% is a lot ofmaterial.
Diane Bickett (23:52):
That's the amount of material recovered from all
this produced, recovered fromeverything that's produced.
Anthony Iovine (23:57):
That is really high Because you also got to
think about it.
A lot of packaging these daysyou know it comes in a tray, the
tray gets ketchup on it orwhatever on it and nobody wants
to recycle that because theactual contaminants on it that
would be something that would goto the landfill.
So you think about all thepaper products that do come in
um.
It's remarkable to see thosesort of numbers come in um.
(24:19):
What our mission is at gatewayand the sales team judy doug z
and uh zach, what they do everysingle day is they go into
facilities and they're dumpsterdivers.
They look and see what thecurrent program looks like and
everybody can kind of do balesof corrugated.
But we look into their trashbins, their trash compactors and
(24:39):
we say let's see we can getthese commodities out of your
landfill and into a recyclestream.
Sometimes we're in thesesituations where people are
spending $10,000 a month ontheir waste bill and we can pay
them whatever $10 per ton orwhatever it is to get it out of
the landfill.
But the biggest thing is we wantto try and starve the landfills
(25:00):
, Whatever we can do to get itout of the dirt.
The Sussick family, the Palmierfamily, they work endlessly and
tirelessly to try and findhomes for us so that we can
support our customer base torecycle.
Diane Bickett (25:14):
Okay, so what do you want to tell our listeners
in terms of if they work at aworker volunteer at a location
that is producing paper thatdoesn't have a recycling program
?
You mentioned that you have ateam that will go out and
dumpster dive and put together awaste audit and potential
(25:36):
savings.
Is there a specific sizecompany that you have a target
for or you won't serve anythingunder 10 employees?
Anthony Iovine (25:46):
I mean, what's the it's all kind of relative to
the amount of employees out ofbusiness is a factor we do look
at, but it's more so what thetonnage they actually generate,
because I've been at a10-employee company and they're
doing 20 tons a month.
It's like how are you producingthis much commodities?
Diane Bickett (26:07):
per month.
Anthony Iovine (26:08):
And it's, you know, because of their business.
There might be a repack orsomething like that where they
generate a lot of those sort ofthings, but mainly what we're
looking at is large volumes ofit.
But the one thing that's greatabout our company we also can do
smaller programs as well andtie it in with our shredding
side.
So Angie and Tiffany, they'rein charge of that side of our
(26:29):
business where they can dosometimes smaller pickups, as
long as they package them withtheir paper recycling as well.
So we do small, we also do bigand we can do from half a ton
pickups to 350 tons per monthpickups.
Diane Bickett (26:43):
Okay, so shredding services, confidential
document destruction, cardboardrecycling, paper recycling and
metal recycling.
So we're talking about cans.
Anthony Iovine (26:57):
Yeah, aluminum cans, pop bottles, stuff of that
nature.
Diane Bickett (27:00):
And what about plastic on the plastic side?
Anthony Iovine (27:02):
Plastic side.
The way that we normally dothat is, we get it from
generators of it.
So if somebody is manufacturinga bottle, say like a Pepsi or
like a Coca-Cola or like aSilgon, they manufacture bottles
by bulk and what we do is whenthey're making those bottles,
sometimes they make mistakes.
The mistakes are actually, youknow, they accumulate, and what
(27:25):
we do is we have that as avalue-added part of our program
that we do with them.
Whenever we pick up the balesof cardboard or the paper we're
doing with them or the baler wesold them, we add that to the
program as well.
So we do it more.
So, like you said, in thesource-separated side, where
it's generated at the actualcustomer and they'll take it and
they'll put it in the binsimmediately and then we'll be
(27:45):
able to recycle it from there.
Diane Bickett (27:46):
Actual, they'll take it and they'll put it in
the bins immediately and thenwe'll be able to recycle it from
there.
Okay, so material coming offthe end of a production line,
clean stuff, store separated, iskey.
So how do people get in touchwith you?
Anthony Iovine (27:57):
You can get a hold of me on LinkedIn.
My name is Tony Iving, but it'sAnthony Iving on there.
Also, you can call the office.
One thing that's great about usis we always answer the phone.
When you answer the phone, it'snot going to be a 1-800 number,
it's Gateway local rep, sowe'll answer every single time.
Diane Bickett (28:13):
Okay, and your website is.
Anthony Iovine (28:15):
It's gatewayrecyclecom.
Diane Bickett (28:19):
Well, that's easy to remember.
And I wanted to leave with onestat which I got from Jessica
Finos at the Cuyahoga CountySolid Waste District.
I got from Jessica Finos at theCuyahoga County Solid Waste
District because Cuyahoga, wetalked about the national
recycling rate for fiber here inCuyahoga County.
(28:45):
In 2024, over 70, almost 73,000tons of paper and cardboard
were collected through homes andbusinesses.
So we're keeping the treesstanding and feeding the economy
and companies like yours.
Anthony Iovine (28:50):
That's huge.
Say that.
Stat again how many.
Diane Bickett (28:54):
The exact number is 72,762 tons of paper and OCC,
which is old corrugatedcardboard in 2024.
Anthony Iovine (29:03):
That's awesome.
Diane Bickett (29:04):
And that's residential and commercial.
Anthony Iovine (29:06):
Well, we're happy that we can be a part of
that.
Diane Bickett (29:07):
Yeah, so keep up the good work, listeners.
Recycling does work, don't?
Anthony Iovine (29:11):
let anyone tell you otherwise.
Please, please, please, don'tgive up on it.
Greg Rotuno (29:14):
Stop asking.
Yes, please don't give up on it.
Anthony Iovine (29:17):
Please don't give up on it.
You can recycle, things can berecycled.
Diane Bickett (29:22):
It out there.
Anthony Iovine (29:23):
Absolutely.
Diane Bickett (29:24):
Yeah Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Anthony Iovine (29:26):
Thanks so much for having us on.
Diane Bickett (29:26):
It was great to see you again, thank you and
thanks for the sandwich.
Greg Rotuno (29:30):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak
CLE.
You can find our full catalogof episodes on Spotify, apple
Podcasts or wherever you getyour podcasts.
New episodes are available thefirst and third Tuesday of each
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Please follow EcoSpeak CLE onFacebook and Instagram and
become part of the conversation.
If you would like to send usfeedback and suggestions, or if
(29:55):
you'd like to become a sponsorof EcoSpeak CLE, you can email
us at hello at EcoSpeakCLEcom.
Stay tuned for more importantand inspiring stories to come.
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, a podcast for
the eco curious in NortheastOhio.
My name is Diane Bickett and myproducer is Greg Rotuno.
Together we speak with localsustainability leaders and
invite you to connect, learn andlive with our community and
planet in mind.
Hello friends, summer iswinding down.
(00:25):
I hope you've been having funin the land I sure have.
It's August already and kids areback in school, and today we
are too, because today onEcoSpeak CLE, we're going to
learn about paper recycling withAnthony Iovine, who is a sales
manager for Gateway ProductsRecycling, a family-owned
recycling company in businessfor over 30 years in Ohio and
(00:47):
Pennsylvania.
Every now and again we do anepisode on how things work, and
I assure you that you will learnsome new things today about an
industry that's been around fora long long time Since the year
1031 AD, apparently, accordingto Google and it's one of
recycling success stories.
The United States recyclesaround 46 million tons of fiber
(01:11):
annually, according to theAmerican Forest and Paper
Association.
Please stay with us and learnwhat happens to all that paper
once it leaves the curb or theloading dock and the role of
intermediate processors likeAnthony and the importance of
paper recovery.
Like Anthony and the importanceof paper recovery in a world of
increasing consumption anddecreasing resources.
Welcome, anthony.
Anthony Iovine (01:31):
Thanks so much for having us.
Diane Bickett (01:32):
Thanks for joining us.
I remember the day we met itwas probably like 15 years ago.
You came into the office tointroduce yourself and I
remember that you were just sohigh energy and I remember
thinking, man, this guy loveshis job and I know you still do
today.
So what do you love most aboutyour work in the recycling
(01:56):
industry?
What?
Anthony Iovine (01:56):
I love most about our job is Gateway has
been a great company to work forfor about 15 years.
Like you said, we've been doingthis for three decades now, but
every day I get to wake up andsave the planet it's kind of the
way I look at it Saving treesby going into customers and
making sure that a lot of thosecommodities aren't going into
landfills but going into ourtrailers or bins or however we
(02:18):
have it at each account andsaving trees in that manner.
Diane Bickett (02:22):
So yeah got a little bit of a green heart I'd
say and you've got a daughter tothink about, so it's important.
Anthony Iovine (02:28):
My wife's actually the biggest tree hugger
, but Paige definitely she lovesthat.
Diane Bickett (02:33):
Go Renee, that's awesome.
So what's different about yourcompany versus, like, a waste
management or a RepublicServices in terms of how, where
your place in the market and howyou handle materials?
Because you have a different,you serve a different sector,
(02:54):
right.
Anthony Iovine (02:55):
Yeah, different approach to what we do.
So both sides single-chainrecycling, or you'll hear the
word MRF Material RecoveryFacility.
Single stream recycling, oryou'll hear the word MRF
material recovery facility.
And also what we do serves agreat purpose for recycling,
just in general.
But yes, we are much differentMRF.
What they do is they get all ofthe commodities in one bin or
(03:17):
in one truck that's dropped offon the floor.
In there there will be plastic,corrugated paper, metals,
aluminum cans all in one compacttruck or one bin.
They'll dump it on their floorand then they'll have sorters at
their facility, whether it'smanual or optical sorters, or
machines that float out thecardboard or float out the paper
(03:37):
, or magnets that take out themetals.
What we're a little bitdifferent is we actually coach
our customers to separate thematerial at the actual point of
generation.
Diane Bickett (03:50):
Source separated is the term.
Anthony Iovine (03:51):
Yes, source separated, and that allows us to
have good, clean material comeinto our facility, which has
allowed us to grow the way wehave.
Diane Bickett (04:01):
And so the single stream recyclers like Republic
and Waste Management and Rumpkeserve the residential sector, so
they're the ones picking thematerial from the recycling bins
off the curb.
Correct?
You're serving mainlycommercial customers such as
Commercial.
Anthony Iovine (04:18):
Yes, so we do a lot in the food industry.
So food manufacturers, grocerystores, also we do distribution
centers, manufacturers, I meanone of my customers even
manufactures pillows.
Greg Rotuno (04:31):
Oh really.
Anthony Iovine (04:32):
We do also stadiums.
We do municipality too as well.
But it'd be if it was actuallysource separated beforehand From
an office or whatever.
From an office, yeah, eventhrift stores.
Thrift stores actually recyclequite a bit.
Diane Bickett (04:46):
Well, you're probably going after cardboard,
so they probably have a lot ofthat material.
You toured me through yourplant back in May, which was
great because I hadn't been herein many, many years.
Anthony Iovine (04:57):
I could see your wheels turning again.
Wheels turning.
Took you back 15 years ago.
Diane Bickett (05:02):
Well, your facility is here in, where some
of our listeners may have gottena keg back in the day because
it's in the former house of LaRose beverage distributor.
But the one thing you wanted toreally get across was there
were some myths about recyclingyou wanted to bust, so why don't
(05:22):
we just dive right in and startthere?
Anthony Iovine (05:24):
So anybody that I meet, whenever I meet them and
they ask me what I do for aliving, I tell them I'm in the
recycling industry.
I work for Gateway Recyclingand the first thing they ask me
every single time is is stuffreally recycled?
Oh gosh, I know, and the answeris yes.
What we bring in on Gateway'send, we coach our customers to
let them know what we can takeand can't take.
(05:47):
There is wish recycling outthere where you know you throw
something into a container andyou're hoping and wishing that
it can be recycled, butsometimes it doesn't get to its
destination.
The biggest thing I would sayis, for those who do have those
questions, you can talk to a lotof recyclers because there's a
lot in the marketplace.
Those who do have thosequestions you can talk to a lot
of recyclers because there's alot in the marketplace.
But also you can talk to citiesand the counties to ask them
(06:08):
where certain materials go.
Doreen Shriver, over at theCuyahoga Solid Waste Management
District they does a tremendousjob with their website letting
you know where you can sendmaterials to that are hard to
recycle.
But you can recycle a lot ofthese commodities.
It just takes a little bitextra, sometimes research, to
(06:29):
get them there.
Diane Bickett (06:31):
And so it's important to follow the rules of
your service provider, ofcourse.
I think when I first started inthe recycling industry as a
government sector person, it was1990 and everything was source
separated.
Curbside recycling didn'tbecome single stream or
(06:53):
commingled until maybe 10 or 12years later.
So early on the material wascollected.
It was more expensive tocollect because you'd have to
have a paper truck go around andthen you'd have to have a metal
truck to come by and get thecans, but it was cleaner so it
probably sold for a higheramount of money, yes, and there
(07:17):
wasn't that added step ofcleaning it up.
But the convenience factor hashelped us get to a really high
recycling rate of like 67%nationwide.
So I think there's a place forboth things in there.
You walked me around the plantand there were just all these
different paper piles, differentpaper grades.
You want to talk about how yougrade and sort the fiber that
(07:39):
comes in.
Anthony Iovine (07:40):
Yeah, so when I started 15 years ago I thought
there was really only like threepaper grades, maybe four paper
grades.
I thought it was just somecardboard and newspaper and
office waste was the main gradesand that's all there really was
.
There's actually like 56different paper grades and we'll
get into them all in thisepisode.
But each different paper gradehas its purpose and use and also
(08:01):
has its purpose for differentprice points.
So, like our sales team reallyneeds to know exactly what
they're dealing with to get itto the right destination, the
majority of the corrugated thatwe get we send it to be turned
back into cardboard.
Also, it can go into gypsumboard too.
So, like drywall, Our newspaperthat we get in, we bring it in.
(08:24):
You saw how we bail it and thenwe send it out through full
truckloads by semi-trailer todestinations that will make it
back into newspaper, but it'llalso make it back into
installation.
One other thing that newspaperdoes is it also goes into a
hydro seed.
So if you ever see wheneverthey do construction on a bridge
, on a freeway, they tear up allthe grass and everything Then
(08:47):
you see a magical blue and greenpage.
Diane Bickett (08:49):
Oh, they're spraying that stuff out.
That holds the seeds in place.
Anthony Iovine (08:51):
So the cellulose part of that is actually
newspaper.
Okay, so office waste that weget in from printers or we get
it in from downtown sky rises.
We bring that in, we bail it,we ship it out to full
truckloads to end users thatwill make it into away from home
products.
So those would be like facialtissue, toilet paper, that would
(09:15):
also be hand towels, napkins alot of the material that we get
in on even on our shredding side.
We have a document instructionthat Angie Wade and Tiffany
Julian they head up.
They bring in a lot of shreddedmaterial and all that material
is considered as office paperand is sold to tissue mills.
Diane Bickett (09:37):
And some of the really, really high quality
stuff is just pure white paperfrom printers and stuff.
Anthony Iovine (09:43):
Yeah, we'll get, like envelope manufacturers or
something we deal with a lot and, like you're saying, printers
as well.
We will get rolls of paper thatis just completely pristine and
white, and what we'll do fromthere is a lot of times if we
can sell it as is, we'll sellthem as is, but if we need to
cut them up, we'll send it toend users and it'll be the
highest dollar grade that wehave at our facility outside of
(10:03):
aluminum.
Diane Bickett (10:04):
Okay, so you bring how many types of grades
of paper here and then what doyou do with it?
Are you doing some sorting andbailing here before it ships out
?
Anthony Iovine (10:13):
Mainly, like we said, we're source separated
recyclers, so what we want to dois get those commodities to us
already sorted.
When it comes to our facility,what we'll do is we have bailers
at our facility, which arelarge machines that make it pack
into what looks like a hugebrick of paper and then,
whenever we get that huge brickof paper, it's called a bale.
(10:34):
Those bales are all accumulatedin our bale room and we'll ship
them out in full truckloadsfrom there.
Okay, we move anywhere from15,000 to 18,000 tons a month.
Diane Bickett (10:46):
Wow.
So, how many?
Just to illustrate how manysemis would that be?
Anthony Iovine (10:58):
So one semi is usually 20 tons, okay.
So you're looking at you knowit could be anywhere from 20 to
30 loads out of our facilities aday.
Diane Bickett (11:04):
Wow, that's a lot .
Anthony Iovine (11:05):
Yeah, so we have Cleveland, Toledo and
Pittsburgh.
Diane Bickett (11:07):
Okay, how many people work in the Cleveland
operation?
Anthony Iovine (11:09):
The Cleveland operation we have 62.
As a company, overall we're 120.
Diane Bickett (11:14):
Okay, and your other locations are Pittsburgh
and Toledo, right?
Anthony Iovine (11:19):
Pittsburgh and Toledo, yeah, you started in
Toledo.
Diane Bickett (11:21):
You had a little story about how the owner of the
company started back in Toledo.
Anthony Iovine (11:26):
The Susser 6 family is who owns Gateway Great
family.
Tom started in the asphaltbusiness and in 1993, on the
backside of the asphalt businesswas actually a small paper
company that the asphalt companyowned company that the asphalt
company owned and at that pointhe decided, for whatever reason,
(11:47):
he wanted to lead that side ofthe company and he took over
that company and became theowner of it and his wife, cindy,
who came to work for one day,ended up spending 30 years at
the company.
She's probably one of thehardest working women females
I've ever been around in thebusiness world.
But we grew from there to thefacility that's.
(12:09):
There's a facility down theroad, about 40,000 square feet,
and we moved there in 2006.
But in 2001, we opened up inToledo.
We saw a need in Toledo for usto grow and we opened up a
facility in Toledo for us togrow and we opened up a facility
(12:30):
in Toledo and then in 2012, weopened up a facility in
Zillianople, pennsylvania.
We grew quickly out of that oneinto another facility in
Robinson Township in Pittsburgh,in the Pittsburgh area in 2016.
So all throughout that growth,tom's been really good about
listening to the sales team andlistening to what our customers
want.
And when we first started itwas just paper.
(12:52):
All we did was cardboard andpicked up bales of cardboard.
But he would ask all thesalespeople, what else is there
out there?
And that's when we got intoplastic recycling, we got into
metal recycling and also gotinto document destruction as
that as well.
We sell equipment, so balers,grinders, shredders, and we also
(13:13):
have a service team that canservice all of those units as
well.
Okay, so we were fortunate tobe able to grow the way we have.
It's family owned business.
So Tom and Sandy they joinedthe business throughout.
That, that's Tom's daughter isSandy, and then Tom's son is
Tommy.
Tommy and his wife Brittanyjoined the operation too.
(13:34):
So Tom and Ryan run theoperation side, and then on the
HR and accounting side would beSandy and would be Brittany.
Diane Bickett (13:45):
Wow.
Well, congratulations on 30years of success.
I mean, in a day where mostwaste management recycling
companies are verticallyintegrated and you know publicly
traded companies, you knowyou're competing with the
biggest, so that's awesome.
Anthony Iovine (14:02):
Yeah, when I first started it was probably a
recycler, probably about 20recyclers.
Just throughout the yearsthere's been a lot of
consolidation, whether you knowout of business or got bought or
just dissolved.
Well, we've been lucky to growthroughout it and just be doing
the right things for our company.
Diane Bickett (14:20):
Okay, with Anthony running the sales team.
Anthony Iovine (14:22):
Yay.
Diane Bickett (14:24):
I want to talk a little bit about markets.
Part of the recycling myth Ithink that we come across in the
industry is that there's nomarket for this material or it's
all going overseas.
And that's not the case forfiber, which is paper, and
cardboard, for fiber, which ispaper and cardboard.
(14:50):
Talk about the domestic andNorth American markets for all
this paper.
It used to be.
There were timber mills inCanada harvesting paper,
harvesting trees to make paper.
Now we're harvesting thatmaterial from our urban cities.
How does that look in Ohio?
What does that look like inOhio?
Anthony Iovine (15:06):
or the Midwest region.
In the Midwest region.
There's various millsthroughout the United States,
but when I first started, therewas a lot more mills.
We've seen a lot of, likeyou're saying, consolidation of
mills.
One thing that forced the paperto stay internally,
domestically, was the nationalsword that was brought down by
(15:26):
China.
And basically what that was wasChina, overnight in 2017, said
we're not taking in theserecyclables and they banned like
24 different types of plasticsor paper or corrugated that was
going into their country.
Nobody really knew why.
At the time, that was thelargest buyer in the world for
cardboard.
Diane Bickett (15:46):
Oh, really, yeah, Because they were shipping all
their stuff back in the boxes.
I mean, there was containers.
Anthony Iovine (15:51):
When I started at Gateway, there was containers
downstairs we were shipping outdaily.
China was the largest buyer inthe world for cardboard and
paper, and then India was way,way, way lower than it, but a
lot of that material was shippedoverseas.
So it's kind of like if youlost the largest buyer in the
world for something simplesupply and demand.
I mean, the supply goes throughthe roof and the pricing went
(16:13):
extremely down.
So, it was hard even at thattime to find homes for cardboard
and paper, but we've lucked outthrough the years to have great
relationships with our endusers and our buyers, that we
were able to move a lot of coreunits in that time.
Diane Bickett (16:30):
When I was still working at Cuyahoga Recycles.
There's a company that opened amill in Wapakoneta called Pratt
Industries and that was likethe first paper mill.
It was like I don't know took along time to get that thing
sited and built and I think theyjust had an expansion.
And Wabakonet is like at theIndiana border right.
(16:51):
Are you sending material there?
Are you allowed to say ifthat's one of your markets?
Anthony Iovine (16:57):
I don't know if that's one of our end markets.
It might be.
I'm not really on the sellingout the material side.
My job is to get, my team's jobis to get the material in.
We do ship a lot of stuffdomestically, though in the
United States, Like I said,exporting is kind of like
non-existent for us in regardsto paper, just because of what
happened in China.
Diane Bickett (17:19):
And you're able to find enough end users here.
Anthony Iovine (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, in the US, yes, yes, because we
have contracts with the millsthat allow us to send them X
amount of quantity per day andwhatnot.
Diane Bickett (17:32):
Good to know that the investment is still
happening and new mills arestill opening.
Anthony Iovine (17:36):
Yeah, new mills are coming on board throughout
the United States.
What happened with the NationalSword was it wasn't so much
that China did not want bales ofcardboard there, they just
didn't want dirty material there.
So a lot of what happened afterthe National Storage was
instituted was a lot of theChinese mills actually came to
(17:59):
the United States and they founddormant paper mills and they
converted them into.
If it was a tissue mill, theyconverted it into a corrugated
mill.
And what they're trying to doand what they're doing is
they're bringing in bales fromus or whoever and they're
pulping it and they're dryingthe pulp and sending the pulp
back overseas in that manner,Really To be made into boxes
(18:20):
over there.
To be made into boxes over there, because if you think about it,
when you pulp something it goesthrough all those lines and
cleans everything, so you getthe purest form of whatever
commodity that you're trying torecycle.
So they then send that back tothemselves.
Diane Bickett (18:35):
Okay, because they need those boxes over there
to ship all our.
Amazon products, exactly,exactly.
How have things changed overthe years?
I mean, it used to be thatpeople would go to a store and
buy something, so stuff wasshipped to the store location in
boxes.
Now those boxes are going topeople's homes.
(18:55):
So is it harder to get thatmaterial into your plant because
you're having to source it frommultiple locations rather than
aggregated at a retail location?
Anthony Iovine (19:07):
The one thing that I think, that's you know,
the Amazon effect has yeah, has,I think, affected our industry
a lot Because, like you'resaying, traditionally the way it
was is you buy a product at astore that came in a box.
They take that box, they put itinto a baler at their location,
they bail the material and acompany like us we come and pick
it up.
so now what happened is that allthose boxes are now going to
(19:29):
our doorsteps, right, and youhope everybody has a sustainable
heart, like all of us in thisroom, but sometimes people do
and sometimes also people don'thave the means to recycle in
their communities, because notevery community that that's in
northeast ohio or the world has,uh, recycling options that you
can actually recycle in a bin,you know.
So I think what happens is someof that material gets
(19:51):
landfilled.
So I think that's affectedvolumes.
And if you look at like thisweek, I think they actually
publicized the recycling ratesfor cardboard, for paper, and it
went from 68 down to 60.
That could be something thatcould affect that.
Diane Bickett (20:07):
Per ton.
Anthony Iovine (20:08):
No, no percent.
Diane Bickett (20:09):
Oh, percent 68%.
Anthony Iovine (20:10):
Yeah, it was 68% a year prior and then the next
year was 60%, so it's gone downa little bit and that could be
something that's certainlyaffected it.
I think one thing that's reallyaffected the industry a lot is
also paperless society.
Back in the day we used to getour news feed how we opened a
newspaper.
You'd open up a newspaper andin there you would have your
(20:32):
social media, which would be theeditorial section, and also the
cartoon section.
You didn't pull up your phoneevery five minutes to check the
score of the Cavs or theGuardians.
You had to read it in thenewspaper.
Looking at stocks you looked atthat in the USA Today and look
how the stock marks are going.
Now there's an app for that, soa lot of the newspapers have
(20:53):
been affected by that, a lotwhere we can just go to our
phone for everything these daysas opposed to opening up a
newspaper and reading a littlebit about what's going on in the
world.
Diane Bickett (21:03):
Yeah, it's tragic .
Anthony Iovine (21:05):
That also goes to the book industry, though.
No effects to books industrytextbooks.
So I'm assuming I haven't beento college in a while, but
assuming you can download thebook now, opposed to going to
the bookstore and buying thatand every single shirt that was
in the store when I was younger.
Diane Bickett (21:21):
I feel like the move to a paperless society is
affecting the things that shouldbe kept, like books and
newspapers, and instead of, youknow, printers spewing out paper
in an office setting orwhatever yeah, that's changed a
lot, like uh office, uh, thehealth care industry has changed
a lot on that end.
Anthony Iovine (21:42):
There are a lot.
There are a lot of paperless,all the contracts that we get
sent now from companies, a lotof it's docu sign, you know.
You know, opposed to printingeverything out, signing it,
faxing it back or emailing itback, it's all done
electronically now where you cansign away at it.
Diane Bickett (21:56):
So why is?
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe environmental side of things
.
We talked about what paper isbeing recycled into.
You mentioned tissue paper,newspaper, cardboard.
Obviously that process ofmaking paper from paper versus
(22:17):
paper from trees has a greatenvironmental benefit.
You're saving 17 trees per tontrees per ton yeah.
Anthony Iovine (22:34):
One ton saves 17 trees and also gets three cubic
yards out of a landfill.
So, you think about the actualtonnage and the actual yards
coming out of a landfill?
Diane Bickett (22:40):
that's very, very impactful.
Yeah, Plus 64% energy savingsand uses 80% less water.
So, as our resources diminish,that's super important.
Back in the intro I said thatthe US recycles 46 million tons
of fiber annually, and I wasgoing to try to do the math to
multiply 46 million tons by 17trees but my calculator wouldn't
(23:03):
go that high.
Greg Rotuno (23:04):
It's wild, isn't it ?
It's a lot, it's great.
Diane Bickett (23:06):
It's great.
Wouldn't go that high.
It's wild, isn't it?
It's a lot, it's great.
The thing that drives me crazyis toilet paper.
Cutting down trees in theboreal forest in Canada because
you need those really longfibers to make the really plushy
toilet paper is just such awaste and I don't think people
realize that that virgin fiberto make the high-end toilet
(23:29):
paper is coming from these oldgrowth trees in Canada, so it's
important for people to knowthat it's important to recycle.
I think paper recycling is oneof our success stories, for sure
.
Anthony Iovine (23:40):
Well, the one thing about paper recycling it
is a huge success.
You think about 60 to 68% andyou're like, why aren't we at
100%?
Well, 60% to 68% is a lot ofmaterial.
Diane Bickett (23:52):
That's the amount of material recovered from all
this produced, recovered fromeverything that's produced.
Anthony Iovine (23:57):
That is really high Because you also got to
think about it.
A lot of packaging these daysyou know it comes in a tray, the
tray gets ketchup on it orwhatever on it and nobody wants
to recycle that because theactual contaminants on it that
would be something that would goto the landfill.
So you think about all thepaper products that do come in
um.
It's remarkable to see thosesort of numbers come in um.
(24:19):
What our mission is at gatewayand the sales team judy doug z
and uh zach, what they do everysingle day is they go into
facilities and they're dumpsterdivers.
They look and see what thecurrent program looks like and
everybody can kind of do balesof corrugated.
But we look into their trashbins, their trash compactors and
(24:39):
we say let's see we can getthese commodities out of your
landfill and into a recyclestream.
Sometimes we're in thesesituations where people are
spending $10,000 a month ontheir waste bill and we can pay
them whatever $10 per ton orwhatever it is to get it out of
the landfill.
But the biggest thing is we wantto try and starve the landfills
(25:00):
, Whatever we can do to get itout of the dirt.
The Sussick family, the Palmierfamily, they work endlessly and
tirelessly to try and findhomes for us so that we can
support our customer base torecycle.
Diane Bickett (25:14):
Okay, so what do you want to tell our listeners
in terms of if they work at aworker volunteer at a location
that is producing paper thatdoesn't have a recycling program
?
You mentioned that you have ateam that will go out and
dumpster dive and put together awaste audit and potential
(25:36):
savings.
Is there a specific sizecompany that you have a target
for or you won't serve anythingunder 10 employees?
Anthony Iovine (25:46):
I mean, what's the it's all kind of relative to
the amount of employees out ofbusiness is a factor we do look
at, but it's more so what thetonnage they actually generate,
because I've been at a10-employee company and they're
doing 20 tons a month.
It's like how are you producingthis much commodities?
Diane Bickett (26:07):
per month.
Anthony Iovine (26:08):
And it's, you know, because of their business.
There might be a repack orsomething like that where they
generate a lot of those sort ofthings, but mainly what we're
looking at is large volumes ofit.
But the one thing that's greatabout our company we also can do
smaller programs as well andtie it in with our shredding
side.
So Angie and Tiffany, they'rein charge of that side of our
(26:29):
business where they can dosometimes smaller pickups, as
long as they package them withtheir paper recycling as well.
So we do small, we also do bigand we can do from half a ton
pickups to 350 tons per monthpickups.
Diane Bickett (26:43):
Okay, so shredding services, confidential
document destruction, cardboardrecycling, paper recycling and
metal recycling.
So we're talking about cans.
Anthony Iovine (26:57):
Yeah, aluminum cans, pop bottles, stuff of that
nature.
Diane Bickett (27:00):
And what about plastic on the plastic side?
Anthony Iovine (27:02):
Plastic side.
The way that we normally dothat is, we get it from
generators of it.
So if somebody is manufacturinga bottle, say like a Pepsi or
like a Coca-Cola or like aSilgon, they manufacture bottles
by bulk and what we do is whenthey're making those bottles,
sometimes they make mistakes.
The mistakes are actually, youknow, they accumulate, and what
(27:25):
we do is we have that as avalue-added part of our program
that we do with them.
Whenever we pick up the balesof cardboard or the paper we're
doing with them or the baler wesold them, we add that to the
program as well.
So we do it more.
So, like you said, in thesource-separated side, where
it's generated at the actualcustomer and they'll take it and
they'll put it in the binsimmediately and then we'll be
(27:45):
able to recycle it from there.
Diane Bickett (27:46):
Actual, they'll take it and they'll put it in
the bins immediately and thenwe'll be able to recycle it from
there.
Okay, so material coming offthe end of a production line,
clean stuff, store separated, iskey.
So how do people get in touchwith you?
Anthony Iovine (27:57):
You can get a hold of me on LinkedIn.
My name is Tony Iving, but it'sAnthony Iving on there.
Also, you can call the office.
One thing that's great about usis we always answer the phone.
When you answer the phone, it'snot going to be a 1-800 number,
it's Gateway local rep, sowe'll answer every single time.
Diane Bickett (28:13):
Okay, and your website is.
Anthony Iovine (28:15):
It's gatewayrecyclecom.
Diane Bickett (28:19):
Well, that's easy to remember.
And I wanted to leave with onestat which I got from Jessica
Finos at the Cuyahoga CountySolid Waste District.
I got from Jessica Finos at theCuyahoga County Solid Waste
District because Cuyahoga, wetalked about the national
recycling rate for fiber here inCuyahoga County.
(28:45):
In 2024, over 70, almost 73,000tons of paper and cardboard
were collected through homes andbusinesses.
So we're keeping the treesstanding and feeding the economy
and companies like yours.
Anthony Iovine (28:50):
That's huge.
Say that.
Stat again how many.
Diane Bickett (28:54):
The exact number is 72,762 tons of paper and OCC,
which is old corrugatedcardboard in 2024.
Anthony Iovine (29:03):
That's awesome.
Diane Bickett (29:04):
And that's residential and commercial.
Anthony Iovine (29:06):
Well, we're happy that we can be a part of
that.
Diane Bickett (29:07):
Yeah, so keep up the good work, listeners.
Recycling does work, don't?
Anthony Iovine (29:11):
let anyone tell you otherwise.
Please, please, please, don'tgive up on it.
Greg Rotuno (29:14):
Stop asking.
Yes, please don't give up on it.
Anthony Iovine (29:17):
Please don't give up on it.
You can recycle, things can berecycled.
Diane Bickett (29:22):
It out there.
Anthony Iovine (29:23):
Absolutely.
Diane Bickett (29:24):
Yeah Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Anthony Iovine (29:26):
Thanks so much for having us on.
Diane Bickett (29:26):
It was great to see you again, thank you and
thanks for the sandwich.
Greg Rotuno (29:30):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak
CLE.
You can find our full catalogof episodes on Spotify, apple
Podcasts or wherever you getyour podcasts.
New episodes are available thefirst and third Tuesday of each
month.
Please follow EcoSpeak CLE onFacebook and Instagram and
become part of the conversation.
If you would like to send usfeedback and suggestions, or if
(29:55):
you'd like to become a sponsorof EcoSpeak CLE, you can email
us at hello at EcoSpeakCLEcom.
Stay tuned for more importantand inspiring stories to come.
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