System is engineered to load shipping containers with ferrous and nonferrous metals.
The BPS Container Loading System from Best Process Solutions Inc. (BPS ), Brunswick, Ohio, is engineered to load 20-foot and 40-foot shipping containers quickly and efficiently with ferrous and nonferrous metals for export. The systems’ three major components are a vibratory hopper feeder, loading belt conveyor and system controls.
The surge hopper is constructed of ½-inch plate and has a holding capacity of approximately 15 cubic yards. The hopper includes a manually adjustable product flow control gate to control the product feed rate. The hopper and vibratory feeder share a support base.
The cantilevered belt conveyor is engineered with a belt speed of 500 feet to 1,000 feet per minute to allow for more material to stack up in the container, BPS says. The loading operation is simple: A truck backs up to the conveyor, allowing the conveyor to go inside the container. Then the operator starts the vibratory feeder and conveyor. As the container is loading, the truck driver slowly pulls forward.
The BPS container loading system includes system controls. The control package includes a variable frequency drive for the vibratory feeder and the belt conveyor mounted in a NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association) 12/4 UL/cull listed enclosure with all necessary operator functions. Load cells or a belt scale can be included as an option.
The location provides mobile shredding, drop-off paper and hard drive shredding and a new prepaid shred bag service.
Legal Shred , which serves New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, says it has opened a new facility at 28 Bill Horton Way in Wappingers Falls, New York, to accommodate the growing need for quality, secure and reliable document destruction services.
In addition to mobile shredding services, the Wappingers Falls location will provide drop-off paper and hard drive shredding and a new prepaid shred bag service. Customers now have the option to pre-purchase a nylon bag by phone, which will be mailed to their homes or businesses. Customers can fill the bag with paper for shredding and, when ready, call Legal Shred for secure, on-site, mobile destruction.
“The decision to expand our presence in the Hudson Valley was a logical step as we have amazing roots here,” says Jason Fredricks, founder and vice president of Legal Shred. “We have the opportunity to further expand our services and provide even more customers in the Hudson Valley with exceptional document destruction services.”
Judith Papo and brothers Jason and Sean Fredricks own Legal Shred, which is one of the largest independent shredding companies in the state of New York.
Plant features a bottle-grade flake production system supplied by Krone that includes a BHS front-end bottle sorting system.
RPlanet Earth, previously headquartered in El Segundo, California, has opened its 302,000-square-foot plastics recovery and production facility in Vernon, California, which also serves as its headquarters. The plant is designed to produce 80 million pounds of food and drink packaging annually using a bottle-grade flake production system supplied by Germany-based Krones that includes a front-end bottle sorting system supplied by Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon. The highly automated BHS purification system processes more than 6 tons per hour (tph) of baled postconsumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and runs nearly 24 hours a day, according to a news release issued by BHS.
BHS says the system employs BHS screens, Nihot air, NRT optical and Max-AI robotic sorting technologies to produce a highly pure clear PET product for further processing. Five NRT optical sorters with In-Flight Sorting technology remove metals, mixed plastics and colored PET and positively sort clear PET. The Max-AI AQC-2, an artificial intelligence-directed robotic sorter, uses a camera, neural networks and two robots to autonomously perform the final quality control (QC) process. BHS also supplied the plant with its recently launched Total Intelligence Platform. This system automatically processes information from the system’s controls system and motors, optical and Max-AI equipment, scales, baler and other sensors to provide an easy-to-use information and analytics platform, the supplier says.
The plant recovers aluminum and other metals and mixed plastics for further processing by other companies.
RPlanet Earth does not sell recycled flake or pellets but processes PET bales and converts them in-house into bottle preforms, extruded sheet and thermoform packaging.
Krones MetaPure technology meets approved scientific guidelines of the large consumer packaged goods companies and is greenlit by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to produce food and beverage-contact products, BHS says in its news release.
“We really are a technology company,” says rPlanet Earth co-CEO Bob Daviduk. “We’re going to bring technology to bear to improve the way that postconsumer PET is recycled. We’ll have the lowest carbon footprint of any packaging in the marketplace because of the way we’ve put the plant together.”
“This is a really amazing process, and we are honored to have supplied the front-end system for Krones and rPlanet Earth,” says BHS Vice President of Sales and Marketing Rich Reardon. “This system fills the demand for RPET from producers and is also a domestic outlet for our MRF (material recovery facility) operators—it’s a true win-win. The commitment to technology really led to an impressive, automated and high-performance system, and we look forward to working with rPlanet Earth and Krones to ensure their continued long-term success.”
Earlier this year, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) approved a $2 million California Climate Investment loan to rPlanet Los Angeles LLC to help pay for the PET recycling infrastructure at its new facility in Vernon.
The financing from CalRecycle’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Loan Program is earmarked to allow rPlanet to transform 1,000 tons of plastic scrap into packaging each year, create 52 new jobs and reduce the equivalent of 1,500 metric tons wort of CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually.
John Thompson will focus on outside service work, production and technical engineering.
ADG Solutions appointed John Thompson to serve as the company’s new technical and service manager. ADG Solutions helps companies process hard-to-recycle plastic waste from industrial, commercial and postconsumer sources.
According to an ADG Solutions news release, Thompson will manage the outside service, production in the Atlanta facility and technical engineering at the company with a focus on PLC work and programming.
Thompson recently held the position of maintenance manager at Fiberon Decking and prior to that was the senior electrical technician at Galvan Industries.
According to an ADG Solutions news release, Thompson has several certifications, including a North Carolina electrical contractor license, certified reliability leader, Siemens S7 introduction, Six Sigma green belt, Studio 5000 Logix designer level 1 and Studio 5000 Logix designer level 2.
“John is key to our continued growth,” says Sandy Guthrie, president of ADG Solutions in a company news release. “His expertise will help bring our organization to the next level and allow us to continue to exceed our customer expectations.”
Material recovery facility (MRF) operators discuss changes they have made to single-stream recycling in recent years.
Pictured above: Mark Badger, Canada Fibers, presents on challenges with single-stream recycling today.
Single-stream recycling is a collection method where households can put everything in one container at the curb. During Recycling Today’s Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference in Chicago, Nat Egosi, president of RRT Design & Construction, said this method is nothing new, but only about half of the recycling programs in the United States do single-stream recycling at all.
Egosi said there are some clear benefits to single-stream recycling collection.
“There are significant savings in collection,” he said. “It’s helped to keep down cost of recycling. Finally, it provides more access to households and more recycling as a consequence. It’s allowed for automated collection. Another benefit is safety—drivers aren’t getting out as much, so it’s safer with less injuries. And there’s convenience, people like it.”
Several material recovery facility (MRF) operators shared their experiences with single-stream recycling, explaining the pros and cons to it, as well as changes that they have made to it with stricter contamination requirements.
Since the National Sword policy was first implemented, Bob Cappadona, vice president of recycling at Casella Recycling, Boston, said Casella has had to move materials to secondary markets such as Indonesia and Thailand. With stricter goals for contamination and the state of Massachusetts requiring recycling, Cappadona said Casella had to make some operational adjustments at its MRFs this past year.
Cappadona said the company has added retrofits where needed to reduce contamination down to 2 percent prohibitives. He said the company has added OCC screening retrofits in order to capture smaller boxes and achieve better value for cardboard. The company will also consider adding optical sorting in future upgrades to clean out fiber products.
Another key to improving single-stream recycling is education—Cappadona said education could help to reduce contamination from coming into MRFs. To date, he said some of the worst contaminants he has seen at MRFs include plastic bags, film plastics, lithium batteries, clothing, cords, ropes and food waste.
Cappadona said Casella launched a #RecycleBetter campaign to educate community members on what is recyclable to reduce contamination levels at MRFs. The campaign has been promoted on social media, the company website and in print ads.
Recycling & Disposal Solutions of Virginia
In recent years, Recycling & Disposal Solutions of Virginia has been hit hard with the backlog of paper coming into its MRFs as a result of changing policies and stricter contamination standards. Joe Benedetto, president of Recycling & Disposal Solutions of Virginia, said he thinks the industry is in a part of a 10-year cycle right now.
“It seems every 10 years we have a catastrophe and then recover,” he said, adding that there are a few things MRF operators can do when these cycles occur.
He encouraged MRF operators to communicate more with customers through open dialogue when these cycles occur.
“There has to be a working relationship with customers,” Benedetto said. “[Customers] understand that even if a product is collected, if it doesn’t get recycled, at the end of the day, that’s not recycling. So, we are trying to educate [customers] on commodities that can be recycled and tell them how markets are changing.”
Benedetto said Recycling & Disposal Solutions of Virginia is working with municipalities to increase education to community members so that they know what can be recycled. Currently, he said Nos. 3-7 plastics are not recyclable at his company’s MRFs, so there has been a lot of education around those items.
As a smaller MRF operator, Benedetto said his company has not invested much in adding new technology to improve contamination rates. However, the company has added more laborers to help with sorting.
“We have not spent money on some of the processing equipment to upgrade our MRFs,” he said. “It’s been suggested to us, but we’re still trying to understand the dynamic, changing market. Until we understand that, as a smaller company, we’re working to preserve cash flow. Once we know where we’re headed, we’ll add new equipment.”
Mark Badger, executive vice president at Canada Fibers, Toronto, reported that there are several challenges for today’s MRF operators, such as overcoming the addiction MRFs had to sending materials to China.
“Since the National Sword policy came down, it was like a bad trip for everyone in the industry,” Badger said. “The game of pass the crap is over.”
There are also the challenges of MRF operators determining what materials should be recycled and dealing with high contamination rates coming in, he said.
“Try creating something with 0.5 percent contamination in it when you have 30 percent contamination coming in the door,” he said. “We have to get [contamination] under control.”
Badger listed a few solutions to these challenges, including the following:
The city of Phoenix is not new to single-stream recycling—Rick Peters, deputy director of public works for the city of Phoenix, said the city has one of the oldest single-stream recycling plants in the United States, which opened more than 25 years ago.
Peters said the city’s MRFs are experiencing the same issues with contamination as other MRFs across the U.S. To address those issues, he said the company is focusing on education and infrastructure investment.
To educate community members on what’s recyclable, Peters said the city placed “Oops!” stickers on recycling bins when they had contaminants in their bins. He said the first week of this initiative, about 72 percent of people received the “Oops!” sticker. After five weeks, though, he said only 29 percent of people received that sticker.
“We’re encouraged by those numbers and will continue to focus on getting quality from the inbound,” he said.
Additionally, Peters said the city is looking to invest in optical sorters and other new technology at its two MRFs to reduce contamination.