McKernan Turns 50

This year, the packaging company founded by Ed McKernan in Elgin, Il, in 1959, and today known for its innovative concepts regarding the sales of surplus packaging components, celebrates its 50th birthday. The company, which moved its base of operations to Nevada, remains family operated although it doubled its punch in 2007 when it was acquired by Richards Packaging. When McKernan coined the phrase “precycling”  (pre-consumer recycling) in 1992, it probably had no idea just how critical that thinking would become, though at the time, it was featured and endorsed by the Discovery Channel and Senator Harry Reid as a “green” company.