When Chad Hurley helped found YouTube in 2005, he likely had no idea the video-sharing website would later help his hometown tell the world about its new materials recovery facility. Birdsboro, Pa., where Hurley grew up, opened the TotalRecycle single-stream materials recovery facility (MRF) one year ago. A video from equipment company Van Dyk Recycling Solutions highlighting the facility and...

This story originally appeared in the February 2017 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content. More than a decade after U.S. states started passing laws putting electronics manufacturers on the hook for the collection and recycling of their products, some are finding their programs are in need of tweaks. To address the issue, stakeholders have...

PerkinElmer used interconnected pieces of equipment to burn e-scrap and study the gases that were emitted. It's well understood that torching scrap electronics - either through crude processing or accidental warehouse fires - releases harmful toxics. But testing supported by the U.S. EPA has now helped identify exactly which substances are emitted, and it found some previously undetected by researchers. Using equipment...

A trucking company is suing two electronics recycling firms and a logistics provider, claiming they were responsible for a battery explosion and fire that injured employees and damaged property. Wilson Trucking Corp. filed a lawsuit against e-scrap companies Imaan International and Global Electronic Recycling (GER) and logistics provider Echo Global Logistics. The complaint was first filed in January in a...

Moore Recycling Associates, known for its plastics recycling data analysis, will now be called More Recycling as the company founders move toward partial retirement. Moore Recycling Associates, started by Patty Moore and Doug McDowell in 1989, is also undergoing a leadership shift, with company veterans Nina Bellucci Butler and Stacey Luddy taking the helm. Butler will serve as CEO and Luddy as chief...

Higher commodity values helped lift recycling-related revenues for the third-largest hauler in North America. Toronto-based Waste Connections reported recycling revenue, excluding the impact of acquisitions and mergers, totaled $13.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2016, up about 16 percent from a year prior. The increase was driven primarily by higher commodity prices, particularly for fiber, Ron Mittelstaedt, Waste Connections'...

Dell says it has consumed 50 million pounds of post-consumer plastics, including millions of pounds of resin from recovered electronics. The Texas-based electronics giant says that as of January 2017 it met its recycled-plastics goal, which was to use 50 million pounds between fiscal year 2014 and 2020. The announcement was tucked into the larger promotion of its use of recovered...

An outreach effort in Connecticut will encourage residents to take advantage of retailer drop-off sites for PE films. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Connecticut state government partnered to bring the Constitution State into the Wrap Recycling Action Program (WRAP), a public-private partnership that promotes film recycling. The program is quickly expanding across the country. PE films are accepted for...

International packaging producer Sonoco will spend $230 million to purchase a major recycled-content thermoforms manufacturer. Hartsville, S.C.-based Sonoco announced the purchase of Peninsula Packaging Co., which says it is North America's biggest consumer of washed PET flake for food packaging. An integrated packaging producer, Sonoco is also heavily involved in the recycling world. It annually collects nearly 3 million tons...

One of the world's largest electronics manufacturers will incorporate recovered marine plastics into packaging for one product line. Texas-based Dell will begin using recovered HDPE from the marine environment in a tray for its XPS 13 2-in-1 notebook, which is a combination laptop/tablet. The tray will be made of 25 percent ocean plastics and 75 percent recycled HDPE food packaging obtained...