Nulife Glass says testing is underway on its New York CRT glass recycling furnace and that another operation in Virginia will get up and running in 2016.
The U.K.-based company reports its Dunkirk, N.Y. furnace began to heat up Dec. 15 and is currently undergoing tests.
“We’re very excited to get that done. It’s taken a long time, a lot longer than I expected,” Nulife CEO Simon Greer told the Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier newspaper.
Once fully operational, the furnace will melt leaded glass from CRT TVs and monitors and separate glass and lead so they can each be recycled.
Greer said a furnace will open at the company’s Bristol, Va. site in 2016. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Bristol facility was held in April and, at the time, Greer said it would take about a year for the nearly $6 million facility to begin smelting leaded glass.
The Bristol site had started accepting glass by the time of the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Nulife is one of a number of CRT glass companies that have emerged in recent years to try to handle CRT tonnages as households and companies move old TVs and monitors into the recycling stream.
Because CRT technology is no longer used in new electronics, traditional CRT markets have dried up and recycling companies and municipalities have seen increased costs to move the material downstream.