Officials at Hugo Neu, which is led by the tightly knit Neu family (the chairman and chief executive, John L. Neu, is the son of the founder, Hugo Neu, a German immigrant who started the company in 1945), said they were led to make the bid by a complicated arc of changes in their industry and in the company's relationship with New York City.
Salvaging Ground zero
Neu said that the tense, emotional months of rescue and cleanup at ground zero, as the scarred steel from the trade towers arrived here ton by ton, created a bond -- emotional and economic -- that wasn't there before.
Last summer, the company began handling New York's residential metal recycling -- until a permanent contract could be awarded -- and that also changed the calculations; officials said they learned how valuable that portion of the recycling stream was, and what exactly was in it. Commodity prices can fluctuate widely, but since July, the company said, it has paid New York US$22 to US$30 a ton for the metals.
The general manager of the Hugo Neu Schnitzer East partnership, Robert A. Kelman, who is Neu's brother-in-law, said that if the company was awarded the contract, the profits from metal recycling would subsidize the plastics portion, just enough to make both work financially. He said that about 40 new jobs would be added, mostly for the plastics operation, in addition to the 750 people the company already employs in the region and around the country.
A spokesman for Waste Management said the company did not comment on bids that were still being considered, or on other companies' bids.
Hugo Neu's vice president in charge of environmental and public affairs, Wendy K. Neu (John Neu's wife and Kelman's sister), said she thought Bloomberg, however much he was criticized for suspending recycling, should also get credit for reframing the debate, because it was on that altered terrain of profit and loss that the company analyzed the process and realized that money could be made.
"At the time, I was horrified -- you worry that once you dismantle a program, it's very hard to bring it back," Wendy Neu said. "But in hindsight, I think there have been problems, and perhaps this has encouraged a debate -- whether we're the ones to do it or someone else is, people are thinking differently."
But nothing Hugo Neu has to offer will make New York's choice easy, waste experts said. Environmentalists like Izeman at the Natural Resources Defense Council are already applying pressure to accept the Hugo Neu bid and bring back recycling immediately, saying the city would be "foolish" to reject an offer with immediate revenue benefits.
Other experts said the city had to think about the long term, and that the national network of contacts and contracts that the big waste companies provide might simply be something that smaller scrap dealers are would be unable to offer. "A small guy is just going to have a hard time," said James Thompson Jr., the president of Chartwell Information Publishers, a San Diego company that tracks the waste industry.
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