Kuusakoski Recycling
13543 S Route 30, Plainfield, Illinois, United States

The story of Kuusakoski began in 1914, when Donuard Kuusakoski set up business in Vyborg collecting iron, metal scrap, and textile waste. Vyborg was the main city of the province of Karelia in Eastern Finland, which, until Finland’s independence in 1917, was part of the Russian Empire.

World War I, the 1920s, and the Great Depression were times of expansion for the young scrap-collecting company. Raw materials were hard to come by and waste was an alien concept. Everything was reused: bricks, wood, metal, textile fibers, rags, etc.

In the 1930s, before World War II broke out, Kuusakoski made its first forays abroad, selling high-grade non-ferrous metals to smelting plants and foundries in Germany and England. But war soon changed everything. In 1938, Kuusakoski set up headquarters in Helsinki, a move that proved crucial to the company’s long-term survival when, two years later, Finland ceded the territory around Vyborg to the Soviet Union as part of the Moscow Peace Treaty.In 1944, Kuusakoski’s Helsinki offices were destroyed in an air raid, and, in a heavy blow to the company, its founder, Donuard, died in 1946. However, Donuard’s sons, Victor and Rafael, took up their father’s mantle and revived the company.