After Edwin Kohlbrenner Sr. moved his scrap-metal business 22 years ago
from Northeast Philadelphia to what was then the backwoods of Hainesport, N.J., nearby residents would sometimes seek out his remote lot to dump their rusting refrigerators, worn tires and old pieces of aluminum siding.
"People called the stuff junk and was just glad to have a place to dump it," he said. "Then, you couldn't put it on the curb to be taken away."
Kohlbrenner learned early from his father, who established the family business in the 1930s, how to turn the discarded junk into dollars. He would sort, crush and truck the metals back to manufacturers of metal products and resell the tires to rubber industries.
"It wasn't called recycling then, but that's what it was."
Now, faced with dwindling landfill space and high disposal fees, governments nationwide are being forced to consider recycling junk as a means to lighten their trash loads.
Edwin Kohlbrenner Jr., a partner in the family business, said he and other junk or scrap-metal dealers believed government's recent interest in recycling would mean more business.
But in Burlington County, where Kohlbrenner operates, officials have ruled out using private, for-profit companies as too costly an alternative. Stung by their company's exclusion, the Kohlbrenners have sued the county in a case other salvagers say could challenge New Jersey's new mandatory-recycling law and set a precedent nationwide for the involvement of private companies in government programs.
"It's an important case because, for better or worse, New Jersey's statute is being looked to as a model for other states since it is one of the first to be adopted," said Duane Siler, counsel and executive director of the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. Based in Washington, the national association represents about 1,800 private recyclers.
New Jersey's recycling bill, adopted in April, requires counties to develop
plans for separating leaves and at least three recyclables from their waste such as bottles, cans and newspapers. The Kohlbrenners are challenging Burlington County over a sentence in the bill that requires counties to give ''priority consideration" to private recyclers already operating in their area.
Burlington County contends that the Kohlbrenners entered the business of recycling household and commercial waste after the county had developed its plan in April 1986 to do the recycling itself.
