Inbox

OK, I can admit it now. Ever since Waste News began publishing 14 years ago, I've had a love/hate relationship with our name. That ends today.

With this issue, we've changed our name to Waste & Recycling News. It acknowledges the sort of yin and yang of environmental management. Waste has the negative connotations. Recycling has the positive. Today more than ever, the two are intertwined.

We may not like it, but roughly two-thirds of the waste we generate still gets disposed of in landfills. It's a critically important business in our society, as it is to this publication, and we will continue to bring you the best coverage anywhere of hauling and disposal news and information.

But scrap and recycling too have always been integral to both environmental management and to this publication. And it's so much more a part of everything we do today even compared to 1995. Recycling now colors everything in how waste management companies and general businesses operate.

We changed our name to reflect that. And toward that end, we're adjusting our content mix as well.

We are increasing our coverage of scrap and recycling. It will not take away significantly from anything we are covering now. And it builds on what we believe already is the best coverage of scrap and recycling.

But we will nudge up the news and information on those areas primarily through 18 special sections in 2009. They will take the form of a wrap around the regular issue comprising at least four pages that will go to scrap subscribers only, with stories targeted to that audience.

All other subscribers will receive the regular issue, as always. In the regular issue we will often feature scrap and recycling news and features more. As always, scrap and recycling news and features will appear extensively in WRN.

Recycling is a concept most everyone feels good about. It's good for the planet we live on. It appeals to our sense of efficiency. It can generate a lot of revenue in these tough economic times.

And I love that it's part of what we call ourselves at Waste & Recycling News.

Allan Gerlat is editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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