PEARL Takes Remanufacturing Message to Congress

March 1, 2012
Many governments around the world do not purchase remanufactured or reconditioned equipment. The Professional Electrical Apparatus Recyclers League (PEARL),

Many governments around the world do not purchase remanufactured or reconditioned equipment. The Professional Electrical Apparatus Recyclers League (PEARL), working with representatives from 13 other industries, hopes to change that. Bill Schofield, PEARL past president and president of Circuit Breaker Sales Co. (CBS), Gainesville, Texas, attended the Remanufacturing Industries Council (RIC) Executive Leadership Team Meeting in Chicago in October to further the cause.

“The focus of the event was to bring together many different remanufacturing industry segments so that we could pool our resources to communicate to Congress the many benefits of remanufacturing,” says Schofield. “In addition to the skilled American jobs that remanufacturing and reconditioning creates, the environmental benefits of resource conservation and landfill management are too significant to ignore. And if you do the total cost-of-ownership calculations on top of these things, there is nothing but positive benefits for society from the promotion and consumption of re-certified goods. But presently, many governments preclude the purchase of any reconditioned or remanufactured goods. And that is what we aim to change.”

During the meeting, RIC members discussed a new study being conducted by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), at the request of the U.S. Congress as part of an ongoing effort to promote U.S. exports. While the study will mainly focus on issues related to remanufacturing companies that export goods, Schofield says part of the study will also affect domestic equipment sales by quantifying and analyzing the size of U.S. remanufacturing industries by employment, revenue and other relevant factors, including the electrical remanufacturing industry.