A plastics recycling giant in Alabama will likely be significantly increasing its output of recycled natural HDPE after receiving a letter of no objection (LNO) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The development will also mean more procurement of HDPE bales by KW Plastics. "The demand we'll see from our sales side will make its way directly down the...

To understand the vision that guides Eureka Recycling, look no further than the very building the organization uses for materials processing. Eureka’s 120,000-square-foot materials recovery facility previously housed a steel production operation. Eureka, a nonprofit enterprise, was able to clean up and repurpose the site and began operating there in 2004. That notion of reuse and recover is central to...

An industry-backed pilot project is taking the next step to develop artificial intelligence on single-stream sort lines. The Carton Council announced it recently deployed a system from technology startup AMP Robotics at a materials recovery facility (MRF) operated by independent waste and recycling company Dem-Con Companies in Shakopee, Minn., roughly 20 miles outside of Minneapolis. The robotics began operating at...

The news that China is aiming to roll out an outright ban on some grades of recovered material jolted the U.S. recycling industry last month. The basic reaction can be summed up by the Scooby-Doo-inspired words of one reader who posted the following to our LinkedIn page the day the story broke: “Ruh-roh.” Ruh-roh is right. Clearly, we’re about to...

This article originally appeared in the July 2017 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.   As North America’s largest hauler and processor of recyclables, Waste Management is constantly influencing the wider world of materials recovery. The publicly traded company has pushed forward the ongoing transition to single-stream collection, a strategy that has boosted collected...

After receiving $400,000 from the federal government, a New York company is developing a mechanical system that could help e-scrap companies handle printed circuit boards more profitably. Advanced Recovery & Recycling (ARR), based in Syracuse, N.Y., is in the process of building out a "depopulator" machine that uses heat and vibrations to separate precious metal-bearing chips from the less-valuable body...

Whenever Apple indicates a new product release, device-recovery firms join in on the wider consumer market chatter. But in the runup to this fall's release of the next iPhone, the recycling and repair buzz - and anxiety - is even more charged than normal. The iPhone 8, expected to be available around September, comes 10 years after the first iPhone...

The recycling chief at Waste Management recently reflected on the company's ongoing efforts to clean up the material stream. The takeaway: It's a long slog. "It's definitely a slow ship to turn," said Brent Bell, Waste Management's vice president of recycling operations, in an interview with Resource Recycling. "We're headed in the right direction. I'm not sure if we've necessarily...

Through the first three months of 2017, exports of recovered plastics were up 21 percent compared with 2016. In March, the most recent month for which U.S. figures are available, scrap plastics exports totaled 396.31 million pounds, a boost of 5.7 percent from February export levels. When matched against March 2016 levels, the volume of plastic scrap exports in the...

Can separation of recyclables from trash ever be a cost-effective solution? According to three experts speaking at Waste Expo, the answer depends on some critical conditions. In a session at the WasteExpo conference in New Orleans on Monday, JD Lindeberg, Lori Scozzafava and Steve Viny expressed varied opinions about the materials recovery approach in which facilities use automation to extract...