At 901 N. Kilpatrick Ave., just east of Cicero Avenue in West Humboldt Park, Greenway Metal Recycling works with Chicagoland companies to repurpose scrap metal and reduce landfill waste at a time when the price of both virgin and scrap metal are unusually high.
“Ten, 12 years ago, we were just coming out of the recession,” Joseph Skowronski, owner of Greenway Metal Recycling, said of the price of scrap metal at the time the business started. “Prices were pretty low, probably 30-to-35% lower than what they are currently.”
According to Federal Reserve Economic Data, the producer price index for iron and steel scrap was the highest it’s been in the last 75 years in the spring of 2022. Prices have remained higher than average since, and are consistently steeper for virgin metal, which is more expensive to make from scratch than scrap metal.
With the price of metal so high today, Greenway serves as a cost-effective and sustainable middle man in the Chicagoland metal industry – paying businesses to take away their scrap metal, then reselling it.
As a full-service scrap metal recycler, Greenway pays a manufacturing, construction or demolition company to collect their scrap metal. Then, the metal comes back to the scrap yard. There, Greenway processes the metal, turning it into a reusable product and sending that to a steel mill, foundry or smelter, where it’s used again.
Greenway also offers a scrap metal audit, where it reviews a business’s current recycling processes and suggests where they can improve it, both from a profitability and sustainability standpoint.
Greenway doesn’t charge for scrap metal audits, transportation or equipment. This makes it more cost-effective for businesses to save money by recycling their metal.
Repurposing scrap metal is also better for the environment.
Over the last decade, Skowronski estimates that Greenway Metal Recycling has recycled about 100,000 tons of scrap metal, mainly from commercial businesses. That’s 100,000 tons of scrap metal that would otherwise end up in landfills or sit untouched on a business’ property.
Skowronski said that most of these commercial businesses buy virgin metal from steel mills or service centers. But some use secondary metal, which is partially derived from scrap metal, rather than produced from scratch.
“If it’s secondary or if it’s brand-new, it’s going through the manufacturing process,” Skowronski said. “It really doesn’t make a difference to me, because I know I’m part of the bigger picture or the life cycle of supplying steel mills with scrap metal.”
Metal and manufacturing
Skowronski’s clients include those who supply parts to companies in the automotive, appliance and construction industries. But he says he doesn’t have nearly as many as he did when his company first started.
“Twelve, 13 years ago, we had more customers on the West Side,” Skowronski said. “We had more customers in the Chicago area, and even in Illinois for that matter.”
He said part of the reason that number has gone down is because many manufacturers that use metal have left Illinois.
“They go to different states that offer tax incentives,” Skowronski said. “We’ve lost a few customers right over the border to Indiana because of tax incentives.”
In the last few years, Illinois has seen several corporations move out, some of which cite the state’s high costs as their reason for their departure. For example, Caterpillar, a large construction and mining company, announced in 2022 it was moving to Texas, partially because of that state’s more favorable tax environment.
It’s also difficult for manufacturers to find workers during a national labor shortage.
Though the manufacturing industry has improved since the pandemic, there are still an estimated 622,000 manufacturing job openings in the country, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Skowronski said that for manufacturing to stay in the Chicagoland area and Illinois, the state should introduce tax incentives. And schools and communities need to continue giving students more alternatives to attending college after high school, like trade school.
“I think that’s starting to happen where they’re giving students more alternatives,” Skowronski said. “I hope that there’s some education going on that’s going to open the eyes of corporations, of schools and students.”
