We recently interviewed Jonathan Cohen, President at Generated Materials Recovery to learn more about industrial recycling services and the story behind waste-reduction business. Based in Phoenix, Markitors shared mutual connections with Generated Materials Recovery and originally thought it was pretty cool that they own the generated.com domain.
Here’s the interview.
What exactly does your company do and who benefits from the service?
For more than 20 years GMR has been a creative problem solver for manufacturing and industrial operations, providing reliable solutions to achieve sustainability goals. We make the most of your waste.
What makes you unique?
GMR focuses exclusively on M&I operations. Unlike the large majority of companies in the recycling industry we are client centric and not commodity sector focused. We are in business to service a client not to buy a certain grade of commodity.
What are you most excited about for the future of your company?
We love walking the floors of manufacturing facilities and working with new operations and understanding their business. It’s one of the fun things of business. You get to go inside a business and share your expertise. I would say what gets us most excited for the future is helping our clients operate more intelligently and efficiently, and helping them understand all the variables that are part of the recycling equation.
We’re big on culture, and love to hear about how other companies operate…especially our own Customers! Do you have core values at your company? If so, what are they and how do they impact your business operations?
You know, we’ve never written them up. But if I had to on the spot, they would be something like, Transparency, Reliable, Consistency, and Equitable.
Reliable because we do what we say we will. We make sure our service happens on schedule and update our clients when there are changes. We earn our clients trust through our daily performance.
Transparency and Equitable because we exclusively use a transparent Revenue Share model with our clients. We never withhold information and will always use our relevant market knowledge to benefit our clients. We seek to create open book, long term partnerships based on collaboration and a clear demonstration of our value-add.
Consistency because we have walked hundreds of Manufacturing and Industrial floors. We understand all of the variables that are part of the waste and recycling equation. We share our expertise with our clients to help them operate more intelligently and efficiently.
One of our core values is “Strength In Numbers.” We love hearing about numbers, and how companies use data to drive decisions. What are some stats that help showcase the impact your company has?
We service over 100 M&I Plant locations and more than 10,000,000 square feet of operating space. Being in business over the last 20 plus years would make it really difficult to estimate the total tons recycled, and the estimated square feet space saved for clients. Let’s just say “tons.”
You know your business better than anyone. What is a misconception clients have that you could clear up if you could? If you could give your clients one piece of advice, what would you say?
To recognize the soft costs and indirect costs. Factor those soft costs – items like floor space utilized, labor, organizational time – into the equation. Don’t be so obsessed with the price you’re getting. Recycling is an equation. Client see the revenue side. But they don’t think as much of all the costs, like how much floor space and dock space they’re getting through recycling.
