In honor of 30 years, the organization will host recycling events in British Columbia, Canada, and provide grants to organizations planning to use recycled tire products in community development projects.
The Tire Stewardship B.C (TSBC)., Victoria, British Columbia, a nonprofit group dedicated to the collection and recycling of scrap tires in British Columbia, is celebrating 30 years of operation. Established in 1991, the group says it is the oldest recycling program in Canada and has recycled more than 100 million tires in the province.
Due to the 30th anniversary celebration being postponed last year because of COVID-19, TSBC will be celebrating throughout 2022. The company says it will partner with other recycling organizations in British Columbia to host events that focus on recycling and environmental sustainability. In addition, several community tire collection events are scheduled across the province throughout the year.
“Every year in British Columbia the equivalent of more than five million scrap vehicle tires are recycled into new, durable, and environmentally friendly products, with 100 percent of all scrap tires collected repurposed within the province,” says Rosemary Sutton, executive director of the Tire Stewardship BC. “In celebration of TSBC’s 30th anniversary, we are excited to be partnering with passionate and innovative community organizations that are creating unique events that help to educate British Columbians on tire recycling and environmental sustainability.”
TSBC says it will also provide grants to British Columbia organizations that plan to use recycled tire products in their community developments throughout the year. Grants go toward a variety of projects including rubber surfacing for playgrounds, water parks, fitness areas, walkways, running tracks and playing fields.
Municipalities, registered nonprofit community groups or organizations, schools, and First Nations and Métis settlements can apply for grants here until March 17. For more information on TSBC community grant program, click here.
Brad Karst will be responsible for managing municipal solid waste and organics markets.
Machinex Technologies Inc., High Point, North Carolina, has added Brad Karst as its North American sales manager. Karst specializes in municipal solid waste (MSW) and organics markets.
The company says Karst will be involved in every aspect of a project from beginning to end. In his new role, he will handle developing MSW and organics sorting solutions in collaboration with clients. He also will be responsible for the client's satisfaction and ensure powerful representation across the United States and increasing the company's sales force.
"Brad comes to Machinex with a wealth of knowledge in the organics sector of the waste business,” says Chris Hawn, CEO of Machinex Technologies Inc. “With years of experience in organics recovery from the waste stream as either co-collection, SSO or extraction from MSW streams, we felt Brad could raise the bar in our response to a dire market need.”
Karst has more than 20 years of sales and leadership experience in the organics and MSW sectors. His responsibilities at Machinex include gathering information about organic diversion from landfills and MSW projects. In addition, he responds to clients' project challenges, budgeting and goal setting while also working with the sales engineering department to develop proposals that meet or exceed the customer's individual needs.
"With my past experience in food waste diversion, we will build a Machinex division to keep up with the growing demands in the industry," says Karst.
Karst can be reached at 612-916-5296 or bkarst@machinextechnologies.com.
The company is looking to secure long-term supply agreements for plastic material to accommodate increased processing capacity at its California and South Carolina facilities.
PreZero US Inc., headquartered in Los Angeles, has announced it is seeking long-term supply agreements for plastic material generated across the U.S. The company, a U.S. subsidiary of German company PreZero International, says it has made “significant strides” in the ramp-up of its plastic processing lines in both its California and South Carolina facilities and that they now have the capacity to accommodate more feedstock.
PreZero US originally partnered with ACI Plastics to operate the recycling facilities in Jurupa Valley, California, and Westminster, South Carolina, but according to a Recycling Today report from October 2021, the company said it no longer was in partnership with ACI Plastics. According to PreZero US, both facilities have the capacity to accommodate significantly more feedstock for processing into resins as part of current waste integration strategies.
In 2020, PreZero announced investments totaling more than $100 million in those plastics recycling facilities, and at the time of the announcement Vice President of Business Development Hendrik Dullinger told Recycling Today, “Since arriving in the U.S., PreZero’s strategy aims to focus on infrastructure and equipment investments, supplier/buyer partnerships and collaborations with local operating partners. All company activities aim towards scaling sustainable innovations that close the loop and support a circular economy.”
PreZero facilities process A- and B-grade low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear LDPE, mixed rigid plastic bales as well as high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) monostreams and regrinds. The company also says its facilities can accommodate combo loads.
In a news release announcing the initiative, PreZero says keeping materials in the U.S. benefits both sides from a monetary and environmental standpoint, and that committing to long-term agreements can help material recovery facilities (MRFs), commercial businesses and other suppliers avoid heightened difficulties in the export market.
The company says it offers viable long-term solutions for plastic waste diversion in the U.S. with the reliability of secure global firm and competitive pricing. Inquiries can be submitted to PreZero here.
The Recycling and Composting Accountability Act aims to improve data collection on recycling systems and explore the potential of a national composting strategy.
U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, Delaware, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) and co-chair of the Senate Recycling Caucus, along with Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia, ranking member of the EPW Committee; and John Boozman, Arkansas, co-chair of the Senate Recycling Caucus and member of the EPW Committee, introduced two pieces of legislation focused on improving recycling and composting systems.
The Recycling and Composting Accountability Act would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to collect and make publicly available data on recycling and composting rates across the country, while the Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act would establish a pilot rural recycling program at the EPA.
“When we look at opportunities for reducing pollution and waste and creating good-paying jobs domestically, recycling is an area that unites most Americans,” Carper says in a news release announcing the proposed legislation. “Yet, our nation continues to recycle only about one-third of the products we consume each year, leading to more and more waste overflowing from our landfills and polluting our oceans.
“To address this growing problem, I’m pleased to introduce a pair of bipartisan bills with Senators Capito and Boozman that would help strengthen our nation’s recycling and composting efforts. Our legislation would improve data collection for our nation’s recycling systems, explore opportunities for a national composting strategy, and expand recycling access in underserved communities.”
Recycling and Composting Accountability Act
The Recycling and Composting Accountability Act aims to improve data collection on recycling systems and explore the potential of a national composting strategy. The legislation would require EPA to collect and publish data on recycling and composting rates across the country to provide an accurate reflection of performance both nationwide and at the state level. Officials supporting the bill say this information is critical to improving existing recycling and composting programs and evaluating future recycling policies.
Bill text is available here.
Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act
The Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act would establish a pilot recycling program at the EPA. This program would award grants, on a competitive basis, to eligible entities for improving recycling accessibility in a community or communities within the same geographic area. The goal of the program is to fund eligible projects that would significantly improve access to recycling systems in underserved communities through the use of a hub-and-spoke model for recycling infrastructure development.
Bill text is available here.
Ohio-based plastics recycler will install sorting robots at its Albany, New York, facility.
Evergreen, an Ohio-based producer of food-grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), has announced that it will be installing artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled bottle sorters at its Albany, New York plastics recycling and rPET manufacturing facility.
When the installation is completed in mid-2022, Evergreen says it will have deployed 15 “high-speed, highly accurate robotic lines at its three of its United States locations.”
Colorado-based Amp Robotics Corp. will supply the robotic sorting lines to be used in Albany. Amp also installed AI-enabled robotic sorting lines at the Evergreen facility in Clyde, Ohio, in April 2021 and supplied sorters to the Evergreen Riverside plant in California last August.
“With demand for recycled PET (rPET) at the highest levels in history, we simply can’t rely on outdated ways of doing business,” states Evergreen President and CEO Omar Abuaita. “Evergreen is playing for keeps. Automating our sorting lines allows us to support ever-larger PET recycling streams, provide the millions of pounds of food-grade rPET our customers have committed to purchasing and achieve a safer, more efficient work environment for our team.”
Abuaita says replacing previous manual sorting processes with high-tech robotics is part of the company’s strategic vision to transform not just the company, but the overall plastics recycling industry.
“Evergreen is a leader in the transformation of recycling processes, and its application of AI-guided sortation is increasing plastic recycling rates and helping to close the loop on PET,” says Matanya Horowitz, founder and CEO of Amp Robotics. “Evergreen’s repeat orders of our systems is a testament to the operational benefits of our AI and automation solutions, and we’re proud to play a role in the company’s expansion and modernization efforts.”
Last month Abuaita revealed that Evergreen, a portfolio company of Houston-based private equity firm the Sterling Group, has invested more than $200 million in modernization, capacity expansion and acquisitions over the last 12 months. The Amp Robotics units are part of that investment.
Evergreen says it now recycles more than 11.6 billion postconsumer PET bottles a year, up from 2 billion in 2021. General Manager Greg Johnson, who is speaking at the Plastics Recycling Conference in Maryland this week, says the AI-enabled sorting lines are an absolute necessity to increase both the speed and accuracy of sorting the growing volume of PET bottles Evergreen processes.
“With the use of AI-powered robotics, we can identify and pick more contaminants from the stream, leaving high-quality clear and green PET bottles to be recycled,” says Johnson. “The consistency and reliability of the robots has revolutionized our process. Our goal is to capture all bottles we can use in our food-grade rPET pellets.”
Evergreen’s annual capacity of food-grade rPET is 73,500 tons, up from 20,000 tons just one year ago. When the company’s expansion at Evergreen Clyde is completed in mid-2022, its annual rPET capacity will swell to 108,500 tons, according to the firm.
Established in 1998, Evergreen operates its original plant in Ohio, plus three it has subsequently acquired in Albany, Riverside and in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada.