Cohen Recycling is a full-service, family owned scrap recycling and management company headquartered in Middletown, Ohio since 1924. Cohen provides local residents and businesses the opportunity to recycle their scrap metal at recycling centers located across southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky. Items accepted at Cohen range from manufacturing byproducts like turnings and skeletons, to auto parts and batteries, to household appliances and electronics, to building and plumbing materials, to cables and wires, and much more. If it’s made of mostly metal, if it plugs in, or if it uses batteries, it is most likely recyclable at Cohen.
100 Years and 4 Generations
Cohen’s history is very much connected to the history of manufacturing in the Midwest. When brothers Phil and Mose Cohen arrived in America in 1924 from Russia, they joined family members who had already put down roots in Ohio. The brothers collected and sold scrap found along the road to the local steel mills as a way to support themselves and their families.
Mose’s son, Wilbur Cohen, was the next generation of the family to enter the business in the 1940s, and successfully negotiated property deals that gave Cohen Brothrs Inc. a larger and more permanent footprint in Middletown. Through the 1940s and 1950s, the country’s need for steel only grew, and Cohen began diversifying into other specialties, such as their New Steel division that could fabricate custom-length I-beams out of scrap.
Wilbur’s sons Ken and Neil joined the company in the early 1970s, each of them taking on responsibilities for new facilities that further expanded Cohen’s capabilities. This decade also saw the first Earth Day and campaigns for public recycling. Aluminum cans became a mainstream household item that everybody could recycle for cash.
In the 1990s, Cohen was offered a make-or-break opportunity to be the exclusive scrap wholesaler to then-AK Steel as it took over the former ARMCO mill. Taking this deal turned Cohen into a 24/7 operation and resulted in a boom of growth in well into the 2000s. They were able to employ more drivers, heavy equipment operators, mechanics, fabricators, metal buyers, and other specialists to sustain the additional demand for recycled material.
A Modern Model of Sustainability
Today, the fourth generation, Andy Cohen and Adam Dumes, represent the continuity of family ownership and values passed down from the founders. The family remains deeply involved in philanthropy and giving back to the communities served by Cohen’s recycling centers through donations and in-kind support to public partners.
For more information, please visit www.CohenUSA.com.