This story originally appeared in the December 2016 issue of E-Scrap News. 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...

Many e-scrap recycling firms target gold and silver but send lower-value plastics elsewhere for disposal or recycling. Not Canadian e-scrap recycling company FCM Recycling, which recently went into the e-plastics recycling business. The company processes mainly HIPS and ABS plastics it used to export to China for recycling. “We capture, upgrade and re-process that material into a useable raw material,...

This story originally appeared in the November 2016 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content. Some full-wrap shrink-sleeve labels can confuse optical sorters and degrade recycled resins, which is bad news for PET plastic reclaimers. Yet the labeling format is anything but a waning trend. More and more PET bottles employ the labels, which use...

A report from The Recycling Partnership and U.S. EPA lays bare the reality there is no silver bullet for creating a stellar curbside recycling program. That being said, researchers did paint a detailed portrait of what successful programs look like. "There was not one individual attribute that indicates success, but several that affect performance and trends became evident," according to...

A report from The Recycling Partnership and U.S. EPA lays bare the reality there is no silver bullet for creating a stellar curbside recycling program. That being said, researchers did paint a detailed portrait of what successful programs look like. "There was not one individual attribute that indicates success, but several that affect performance and trends became evident," according to...

Resource Management Companies (RMC) wasn't chomping at the bit to get into the glass beneficiation business. It was more or less forced to by the realities of glass collections and markets. But then the Midwest operator of materials recovery facilities (MRFs) found that it liked cleaning up glass for downstream users, said Cal Tigchelaar, company president. "We used to have...

Waste and recycling technology company Rubicon Global will provide its software capabilities to the City of Atlanta free of charge for six months. The Atlanta-headquartered company offered its software tool to help the City improve residential route efficiency, track diversion rates and target outreach to households. The Atlanta City Council on Oct. 17 voted unanimously to go forward with the...

Germany increased its average recycled content in PET bottles last year, despite challenges in pricing compared with virgin plastic, according to an industry group. According to Forum PET, Germany saw an average of 26 percent recycled content in PET bottles in 2015, up from 24 percent in 2013. The increase came despite an eroding price advantage over virgin PET. "We would...

Upgrades to a San Francisco materials recovery facility have boosted throughputs by nearly 40 percent and ensured the adaptability needed to confront an evolving ton. Recology, which operates the state-of-the-art facility, provided Resource Recycling with details of the major upgrade. Meanwhile, elsewhere in North America, sortation line upgrades have helped other MRFs clean up recovery commodity streams for their end...

Optical sorters from Chinese company Hefei Angelon Electronics use the company's proprietary software to achieve high-purity fractions based on color. The Angelon Plastic Color Sorters sort plastics based on a wide range of subtle color differences. The company makes two models of its CCD full-color sorter: the smaller A221C4-128V6, which has a throughput of 0.5 to 1.0 ton per hour,...