by Matt Jones
As Steve Kurtzman often says, he “grew up in the garbage business,” having spent his career immersed in the waste industry. His father owns a sanitation company and he has worked with that business since the 1970s. During that time, he would occasionally pull some materials from the refuse to sell for scrap metals. It was that experience which led him to branch out and launch a recycling center, Innovative Recycling Inc., in 1991. Based in Galion, Ohio, the business serves that area as well as the Crestline, Bucyrus, Mansfield, Ontario and Shelby areas.
“I just thought that to grow in the sanitation business, you’re going to have expand into recycling,” said Kurtzman.
Before the business was even a decade old, they needed to expand and moved into a 350,000 square foot warehouse where they still operate to this day. “It’s pretty full now,” he said, adding, “I don’t think we hardly have room for more growth.” While further growth may be limited, the facility has supported their growth to date, including their foray into tire recycling which resulted in the launch of another sister company –Willig Tire Recycling.
The Innovative Recycling fleet includes several Mack brand roll-off trucks.
Briquetting is one of Innovative Recycling’s core operations. The company receives steel turnings from a variety of vendors and processes them back into a solid briquette form for use by steel mills. Innovative Recycling carefully separates the different grades of steel turnings, compresses each grade into individual briquettes (or “pucks”), and ships them exactly as they are. The turnings are not blended together, ensuring mills receive a consistent, single-grade product.
“We’ve been growing pretty good in the briquetting area and we do 2,000 tons a month of turnings into briquettes,” said Kurtzman. “And lately we just put in a new used Sierra shear baler, which is helping us quite a bit on growth. So we’ve been moving right along and moving into different commodities. Next month, we’re putting in a copper chopping line, so we’re covering all avenues.”
Copper separation is one of the key areas in which the recycling sector has evolved along with the company in the over three decades since it was launched. Kurtzman also points to electronic, optical sorters and balers and even tire shredding technology as areas where new technology has drastically changed the recycling sector. The quality of the wire that can be extracted from a tire is significantly better today than it was 20 years ago.
Innovative Recycling operates a convenient drive-through purchasing area for peddlers and procures significant volumes of scrap metal from a network of dealers. The company also provides industrial roll-off services, collecting recyclable materials directly from manufacturing facilities and other industrial operations. Supporting these efforts is its in-house logistics company, which streamlines transportation and ensures efficient movement of materials throughout the recycling process.
Innovative Recycling turns around 2,000 tons of steel turnings into puck-sized briquettes per month.
Another pillar of their business is in junk cars. Kurtzman indicated that the company buys cars on a daily basis and puts out two to four loads per day. While the processes involved in producing cars have changed significantly since 1991, the process of recycling them hasn’t.
“You get a lot more aluminum in a car now than years back, but it’s essentially the same,” said Kurtzman. “But it seems that cars just don’t last as long as they used to, so you see later models coming through quite often. We will pull off parts that are good and sell them on the internet.”
The company maintains an active advertising program and offers a pickup service for people who don’t have a way of delivering their end-of-life vehicles to Innovative Recycling. To support this feature of their business, they run five Mack brand roll offs, which are shared between the various associated businesses. There’s also an International truck in their fleet, but for the most part Kurtzman has long-standing brand loyalty to Mack.
“They’re just heavy duty built,” said Kurtzman. “And the availability of parts is good.”
The end result is sold to steel mills, foundries and other locations generally to be used for rolled steel, rebar or bearings among other purposes.
Between all their different related companies, Kurtzman says that they employ just over 100 people. In fact, one of the things that makes Innovative Recycling stand out is the fact that they are a family-run business with quite a few sons, daughters and various in-laws employed, including Kurtzman’s wife.
Are there any challenges in working with so many people that you have close relationships with?
“Vacations,” said Kurtzman bluntly, before bursting into laughter. “Definitely vacations, but we work around it. We’re used to it now.”
Asked about the biggest challenge for Innovative Recycling in 2026, Kurtzman pointed to the attraction and retention of employees. The recycling and scrap industry is not for everyone. The work is physically demanding, often performed outdoors in varying weather conditions, and requires a strong commitment to safety and hard work. However, for those who embrace the challenges, it can provide a stable and rewarding career, with many employees remaining in the industry for decades.
Before the business was even a decade old, it had grown enough that they moved into this 350,000 square foot warehouse where they still operator to this day.
The company has several employees who have been with the company for 30 years. And the family element plays a positive role as well as – the employees do tend to enjoy having so many family members around.
Increasing cost inputs, including fuel and insurance, also put pressure on the business. In response to those pressures, while the company is always on the lookout for new equipment that could open up new avenues for them, they are very calculating about whether to actually move forward with an investment.
“Like this copper chopper line we’re putting in,” elaborated Kurtzman. “We made sure we’ve got enough volume to run it, an area for it and the power to run it.”
Another challenge has been communicating the new requirements from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). There are always people looking to argue about whether they should have to present their identification or have their photo taken. Similarly, the company’s website features their extensive ‘Do-Not-Buy’ list, including guns, paint cans, fluorescent lights and other materials that Innovative won’t touch.
In some cases, that list goes back to DHS, as there are certain materials that companies are prohibited from handling. But in other cases, the items on the list are simply materials that Innovative Recycling doesn’t deal with, like glass for example.
“We don’t take glass anymore,” related Kurtzman. “We’ve had containers out, people pull up there and you can’t police it all the time and they’ll throw something in there and contaminate the whole load and then the whole load is a landfill load or a downgrade.”
On that topic, cross-contamination is a significant challenge for this type of business. Kurtzman said they undertake significant efforts to ensure that everything is kept separated. They also make sure to teach employees how to properly handle materials to avoid contamination or more dangerous issues, such as potential explosions if the wrong materials are exposed to each other.
Looking to the future, Kurtzman says that the company is considering adding in engine crackers for busting up aluminum motor blocks to compliment the SAS Extreme Auto Processor which has served the company well in recent years. Another drive-on scale is also set to be installed in the near future.
Published August 2026