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 Brian Taylor |
Overseeing a small business offers a seemingly endless series of obstacles, setbacks and other challenges and risks that can cause stomach ulcers to be a chronic condition. The scores of small business owners I’ve interviewed over the past 20 years adopt different attitudes and coping mechanisms, but most of them acknowledge that the path can be difficult. Thus, when a business owner in the recycling sector receives an honor for a job well done, the business media ideally can play a role in helping congratulate the person being honored. In late 2010, MassRecycle, a Massachusetts statewide recycling coalition, presented Ben Harvey of E.L. Harvey & Sons, Westborough, Mass., with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Dmitriy Nikolayev, president of MassRecycle, recognized the decades of accomplishments of Ben Harvey and the family business for which he serves as executive vice president. “Ben’s contributions to developing the recycling infrastructure in Massachusetts have been unparalleled,” said Nikolayev. “Long before recycling was fashionable, Ben recognized the re-use value of the waste materials that his family-owned business collected and led E.L. Harvey to being a leader in the field.” (See the news item on page 16 of this issue for more detail.) Under Ben’s management, E.L. Harvey has invested in land, equipment and infrastructure that has enabled the company to recycle a wider array of secondary commodities and a higher percentage of the materials that pass into the company’s possession. The concept of recycling enjoys waves of popularity that peak and then subside. Similarly, government support for the notion of recycling can come and go, often depending on the most recent election. Building the type of recycling business that E.L. Harvey & Sons has become, however, cannot be accomplished with fickle levels of commitment. Rather, people like Ben Harvey, other family members and those who have worked most closely with them have to climb uphill—often battling through the ulcers—to offer the services and run the equipment that turns recycling from concept to reality. (For a more thorough look at how this has been done at E.L. Harvey & Sons, see “Family Ties” in the Jan.-Feb. 2008 edition of Construction & Demolition Recycling magazine.) Amazingly, Ben Harvey has helped oversee a family business while also adopting leadership roles in many recycling-related trade organizations and associations. He is past-president of the Paper Stock Industry chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI), the Detachable Container Association, the Eastern Paper Mills Association and the Waste Recyclers Council of NSWMA (National Solid Waste Management Association, part of the Environmental Industries Association). He currently serves on the board of directors of MassRecycle, the Environmental Industries Association and ISRI. There is no guarantee that owning a recycling company will get any easier in the years ahead. But ideally the accomplishments of people like Ben Harvey in the past several decades have helped mark the path a little more clearly.  |
Explore the January 2011 Issue
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