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Kimmel Agenda
Reinvest proceeds to buy a Torah and rebuild a broken neighborhood.
By Maureen McDonald
JOE KENNEDY/KIMMEL SCRAP
O
Robert Kimmel, President of Kimmel Scrap.
Kimmel Scrap Iron & Metal Co.
10571 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI 48204
(313) 934-1100
kimmelscrap.net
ne part of Judaism is called tik-
kun olam. It says that the world
has been broken into pieces. All
this chaos, all this discord,” says
a character in Rachel Cohn’s novel Nick
& Norah’s Infinite Playlist. “And our job
— everyone’s job — is to try to put the
pieces back together. To make things
whole again … Maybe we’re the pieces.
Maybe what we’re supposed to do is come
together. That’s how we stop the break-
ing.”
A scrap dealer, neighborhood catalyst
and parochial school philanthropist
hopes to encourage more people to help
their communities as an expression of tik-
kun olam, a means to put the pieces of a
divisive society back together.
Robert Kimmel is the third-generation
owner of Kimmel Scrap Iron & Metal
Company at Grand River and Livernois in
a hardscrabble neighborhood of Detroit
located on a 20-acre parcel. Since 1930 in
Iowa and 1950 in Detroit, the company
has recycled leftover materials from
manufacturing plants and sold to steel
mills and foundries around the nation by
rail and truck.
The firm provides specially designed,
environmentally friendly containers for
client scrap requirements depending on
what is needed, from roll off, lugger, bar-
rels and boxes to ship steel and iron, to
foundries that can transform the old into
new, helping sustain jobs, reduce energy
consumption and boost company profits
in the United States. Kimmel Scrap Iron
& Metal is strictly a commercial recycler
under corporate contracts.
In all communications, Kimmel
requests employees and customers to be
vigilant about safety and to take proac-
tive steps to prevent accidents or injuries
and to adopt the company’s zero toler-
ance policy for unsafe acts or conditions.
At Kimmel, safety is job one.
“We train our employees in all manner
of safety from loading and unloading to
driving scrap haulers,” Kimmel says. “In
fact, we shut the business down monthly
for company-wide safety training sessions
to ensure that everyone understands
the importance of safety procedures and
protocols. It also has the effect of letting
everyone know we care about them, their
well-being and working as a team.”
In all its business dealings, Kimmel
Scrap employees practice principles
developed over its 67-year history in
Detroit.
“We truly stress safety first and fore-
most. We say what we mean and mean
what we say. We are ethical. We strive
to be the best trucking/recycling com-
pany in the country. We exercise mutual
respect with customers and employees.
We have fun! We work and play hard, but
we remember to enjoy what we do,” says
the company mission statement framed
on the wall of the office.
Kimmel is a member of Businesses
United with Officers and Youth (BUOY)
out of Detroit’s Second Police Precinct.
Kimmel’s Chief Operating Officer Ken
Schutt serves as president of BUOY and
has also helped lead the company’s
community blight-busting efforts in the
neighborhood.
“We love it here. The neighborhood has
been good to us,” Kimmel says. He notices
more young people moving into the
very affordable houses, riding bikes and
pushing baby carriages. The firm stayed
through the rough times and celebrates
the area’s revival.
Kimmel and his wife, Laurie, a psy-
chotherapist, also support a Jewish teen
center in Ferndale and the Mesifta High
School in West Bloomfield, which is close
to their home. They have two children, a
grown son who is a rabbi in New York and
a daughter who is a sign language inter-
preter in Kalamazoo.
Last fall, Robert and Laurie Kimmel
helped Mesifta High School acquire its
own Torah. The Sefer Torah was dedicat-
ed in memory of Robert’s father, Morey
Kimmel, who along with his wife, Ruth,
founded Kimmel Scrap in Michigan in
1950.
A grand party was held for everyone
affiliated with the school. More than 200
people gathered and walked from his
house to the school, installing the Torah
in its rightful place as part of the daylong
celebration. All told, the Kimmels helped
raise substantial funds for the school and
continue to be active in the school’s suc-
cess.
Kimmel doesn’t preach, doesn’t lecture
others to do as he does; he just leads by
example, says his friend, Bruce Babiarz
of BAB Associates, who says Kimmel is
a great corporate citizen and booster of
Detroit, a man with deep roots in philan-
thropy.
“We don’t operate just for profitability.
We do the right thing for all stakeholders,
that is why we are here. When my son
was a Boy Scout, he shared their motto
with me: ‘When visiting any outdoor area,
try and leave it better than you found it.’
The less impact we each make on our
environment, the longer we will have to
enjoy what we have,” Kimmel says. “We
think that way in our business as well.” Y
jn
July 18 • 2017
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