"Once upon a time...BIR created a unified recycling world." Thus begins The Story of BIR, a condensed history of the international trade group it published in honor of its 60th anniversary, which it celebrated at its spring convention this year in Monte Carlo. As the book notes, leading recyclers from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg gathered at the Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam on March 18,1948, to mark the 125th anniversary of Dutch recycling company B.J. Nijkerk. After the reception, Bob and Hugo Nijkerk-two directors and owners of the scrap company-suggested to their guests that they should form a Benelux recyclers association and use that group to develop a wider international recycling organization. That decision laid the foundation for the first transboundary recycling organization, known today as the Bureau of International Recycling.
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