AIM Recycling’s New Children’s Book Shows the Importance of Metals Recycling Through the Eyes of a Child

The first time Corey Cooper, Director of Marketing Ontario & USA at AIM Recycling, took his youngest son to an AIM facility, it was an awe-inspiring moment for the young boy.

"I was planning to drive my son to a Target in Buffalo, but we had to make a pit stop at AIM's headquarters in Hamilton because we were building a 400-meter-long acoustic barrier and I was asked to be on site," Cooper said. "When he saw the wall, he made a comment that we needed electricity to keep the 'dinosaurs' inside."

The "dinosaurs" in question were the larger-than-life-sized loaders and cranes Cooper's son saw throughout the facility. The connection between dinos and recycling equipment happened again to Cooper during AIM's annual family day. As he worked with the team's Director of Maintenance, Karl Marcotte, to map out a tour of the facility for families, they arranged the material handlers and loaders to make it look like the different types of equipment were interacting with each other.

"Karl had mentioned that they looked like dinosaurs," Cooper said. "Then he pointed out our 8,000-horsepower mega shredder and told the families to imagine it as a giant T-Rex chomping down."

Those experiences inspired Cooper and his colleague Alba Estrada, Marketing Specialist USA, to begin work on Dinos in the Scrap Yard: A Metal Recycling Adventure, a children's book designed to get kids engaged and excited about metals recycling.

"When it comes to recycling, people outside of the industry know they should recycle aluminum cans, but that's not the case when it comes to general metals recycling," Estrada said. "We wanted people to come away with a better understanding of what a yard is really like and the benefits of recycling."

According to Cooper, the book was written on behalf of AIM Recycling to raise awareness about the importance of metals recycling and to demonstrate how recycling can help protect the planet, reduce waste, and create value from resources by keeping materials in circulation.

"We tried to tie Theo's adventure in the yard to what actually happens at a facility, so you're not just reading about a young boy imagining a machine turn into a dinosaur, you're watching him go through the recycling process," he said. "For example, one of the lines goes 'He hopped onto one's back just to see how it felt/a true recycling hero sorting metals ready to smelt.'"

When working through the content of the book, Cooper and Estrada held panels where they spoke to teachers and educators throughout the U.S. and Canada to ensure the writing and messaging were appropriately geared toward the target audience.

"We walked a kindergarten class through the first draft of the book to see how they reacted to the book and how they interacted with it," Cooper said. "We also got feedback from the teachers and students and their feedback helped us write the thought-provoking questions in the back of the book."

To encourage children to explore the world around them and use their imaginations like Theo did in the story, the team at AIM developed discussion questions and explorative activities that children could do with their parents or teachers.

"Some of the questions we included were, 'What was your favorite part of Theo's adventure at AIM Recycling?', 'How do you think Theo felt when he imagined the shredder as a T-Rex and watched it process old metal?', and 'What are some of the ways that you can recycle metal and take care of the environment in your community?'" Cooper said. "These questions help kids connect with the story and the character and then figure out what they can do on their own.

In addition to educating children about the basics of recycling, Cooper hopes that the book will help readers of all ages learn something new about the value of metals recycling.

"As Alba and I were writing the book, we would reach out to our colleagues in operations, marketing, sales, and other departments to test pages and portions of the book," he said. "We wanted to make sure that what we were including was accurate to the recycling process without going into the intricacies like grading a load. For example, there's a line, 'With each piece of metal Theo felt a new thrill knowing part of his mission was to recycle for a mill.'"

Cooper had always liked the idea of writing a children's book. Throughout the process, he found that one of the most important elements was having strong collaboration across the whole team. In some ways, he said, it felt like Theo's journey in the book. Just as Theo wouldn't have been able to get inspired without a collaborative team in the recycling yard, Cooper and Estrada were inspired by their team at AIM.

"This book isn't just about a dinosaur in a recycling yard, it's about the impact that metal recycling has on the world around us," he said. "We hope it will serve as a resource for the organization, for the industry, and for educators and families outside of the organization."

Photos Courtesy of AIM Recycling.