China’s Operation Green Fence, an inspection and tax assessment protocol created and enacted by several Chinese government agencies, has caused turmoil for some U.S. recyclers in 2013, panelists at the Paper Recycling Conference in Chicago agreed.

The panel of recycling executives largely agreed, however, that the long-term effects of Green Fence include a positive and necessary step toward increased secondary commodity quality and uniformity.

“The nature of the materials [Chinese buyers] were dealing with, some of it was less than desirable,” said Bill Caesar of Waste Management Inc., Houston, who had visited Chinese mills in late 2012. “Things had to change.”

Caesar also said the issue goes beyond the efforts of China’s government agencies. “There are a number of [paper] mills in North America that have created their own Green Fence,” he commented.

Greg King of RockTenn, Norcross, Ga., said Green Fence is “probably doing things that should have happened sooner,” referring to standards that have been Chinese law for a number of years before Operation Green Fence began in February 2013.

Caesar said operators of material recovery facilities (MRFs) have struggled with increased residue rates at the same time Green Fence was enacted in part because of the placement of larger recycling collection carts in many cities. “Residents who think something might be recyclable, but they’re not sure, they conclude, ‘I might as well put it in the recycling bin,’” he remarked.

Caesar continued, “It was a bright idea to give homeowners a bigger bin for recycling instead of garbage, but that’s how I end up with garden hoses that wrap around my machinery. I’ve already got residue as it is. I don’t need any more.”

He also commented, “Five years ago you could find a recycling coordinator in a community. That job didn’t make it through the recession.”

Shawn Lavin of Pioneer Industries International, Minneapolis, Minn., said the hauling and recycling industry needed to fill a large void in recycling knowledge to create more effective recycling programs. “This group [those in attendance] needs to do a better job of educating the public. I’m surprised that there is so little policing [of collection].”

Jimmy Yang of brokerage firm Newport CH International LLC, Orange, Calif., said the impact of Green Fence is hard to deny and easy to recognize. “China has become a force to be reckoned with,” said Yang. “Anything China buys goes up in price and anything it sells goes down. Recycling facilities will have to up their game by making investments in equipment and labor,” he remarked regarding a response to Green Fence.

Caesar admitted that Waste Management is among the companies that is investing to do just that. “I throw away or put in the wrong bale a lot of material, such as PET [polyethylene terephthalate] bottles stuck in paper bales,” he remarked. “There are huge opportunities for us to get better.”

The 2013 Paper Recycling Conference partnered with the PSI Conference was Oct. 16-18 at the Marriott Downtown Chicago Magnificent Mile.

Speakers Patty Moore (left) and Tamsin Ettefagh address attendees of the 2013 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show workshop "Plastics Recycling: What You Need to Know to Succeed," Oct. 16.

The 2013 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show kicked off Oct. 16 with a number of workshops that looked beyond the conference’s namesake material, including “Plastics Recycling: What You Need to Know to Succeed.” In this session speakers Tamsin Ettefagh, vice president of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) recycler Envision Plastics, Reidsville, N.C., and Patty Moore, president and CEO of Moore Recycling Associates, Sonoma, Calif., addressed the importance of diversified end markets as well as other factors to ensure success in the field of plastics recycling. Moore and Ettefagh also looked at a number of issues related to plastics recycling, including bale specifications, China’s Operation Green Fence and optimal collection methods, offering their insights into these areas.

Regarding China’s Operation Green Fence, which was initially implemented in February of this year, Moore said Chinese government officials initially said the program, which was designed to enforce a number of the country’s existing laws regarding the importation of scrap material, was to conclude at the end of November. However, after a recent visit to China during which Moore spoke with government officials and recycling industry representatives, she concluded that Operation Green Fence would remain in place indefinitely, adding that things would not be going back to the way they were before this measure was implemented.

“For the first time, buyers are able to impose bale specs on suppliers,” Moore said of the current situation regarding recovered plastics being shipped to China. She added that this also meant suppliers were able to get a premium price for quality material they shipped to Chinese consumers.

Markets for low-grade materials have not completely disappeared as a result of Operation Green Fence, Moore added, noting that outlets are still available, though pricing for such material has declined substantially.

Ettefagh said she saw an opportunity for traditional paper stock packers to expand into plastics recycling by establishing PRFs (paper and plastics recovery facilities). These operations would differ from MRFs (material recovery facilities) in that they would narrow their focus to paper and plastics packaging. She advised operators to limit their focus to plastics that offered critical mass, such as film and rigid containers, particularly the stream of polyolefin plastics generated by grocery stores.

Ettefagh stressed the need for plastics recyclers to have diversified end markets, noting that many markets, such as HDPE pipes used in construction, may be seasonal in nature.

Moore said recyclers needed to know exactly what they were buying when purchasing material for processing, adding that some additives make plastics nearly impossible to recycle.

She also offered her thoughts on the best collection methods for various types of plastics, suggesting that retail drop-off was the best method to collect plastic film, curbside recycling was best for rigid containers and perhaps EPS (expanded polystyrene), special collections were best for bulky rigids and commercial collection was best for commercially generated rigids, foam and film.

The Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show is taking place Oct. 16-18 at the Marriott Downtown Chicago Magnificent Mile. The 2014 event also will be held in Chicago Oct. 8-10. More information is available at www.PaperRecyclingConference.com. 

Certification is important in the electronics recycling industry and an asset each business owner should consider, Jade Lee, president of Supply-Chain Services (SSI), Lombard, Ill., said during “Recycling Electronics Responsibly," a workshop Oct. 16 at the 2013 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show at the Marriott Downtown Chicago Magnificent Mile. 

“Certification is for building a strong company so you can grow your company,” Lee said. “More and more companies have come to understand this is what they have to do." 

Jade Lee, SSI President

SSI has nine key certifications, Lee said, which took a great deal of hard work and time to accomplish. The company is certified to R2 (Responsible Recycling Practices), Recycling Industry Operating Standard (RIOS), ISO 14001, ISO 9001, OHSAS 180001 and four NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) AAA certifications.

Lee said obtaining the nine different certifications was a long process but has improved the company significantly. “It was a very long process, since 2004, but with determination it really transformed our company into a company that can manage a wider variety of corporate customers.”

In 2010, the industry began certifying electronics recyclers for the R2 Standard, she said. Since that time, nearly 400 electronics recycling facilities have been certified to the R2 Standard.

The R2 Standard was recently updated. The updated standard, R2:2013, went into effect July 1, 2013.

Jason Teliszczak, CEO of JT Environmental Consulting, Elmhurst, Ill., who was also a panelist on the electronics recycling session, said the updated standard is “more stringent.” The R2 standard has 13 provisions, he added.

The annual fee for the new standard, for example, is now $1,500, and downstream vendors must provide exact names and locations of facilities that will be handling focus materials (FMs) until final disposition, Teliszczak pointed out.

“Materials that are sold for reuse must be sent back if they contain FMs and aren’t working at the expense of the organization that sold the reused materials,” he said.

As with the R2 Standard, the e-Stewards certification also requires an annual fee, but the cost is based on a company’s annual sales, Teliszczak added. E-Stewards is a globally accredited, third-party audited certification program.

Unlike the R2 Standard, however, e-Stewards certification is company-based, not facility based as is the case with R2. “It’s very detailed and in-depth,” Teliszczak said of e-Stewards.

Lee said that while both R2 and e-Stewards are “top notch” standards, it is a myth that all standards are good standards.

“But certification has become a baseline,” she added.

 

 

Erema, based in Ansfelden, Austria, has launched the new Intarema plastic recycling and extrusion system at the 2013 K Show in Düsseldorf, Germany. The company says the innovation is designed to maximize productivity and offer flexibility and easy operation along with considerably lower energy consumption.

The Intarema system features the company’s Counter Current system in the border area of the cutter/compactor and tangentially connected extruder. As a result, the company says, the extruder can handle more feed material in less time. The company says the inverse tangential configuration of the Counter Current system ensures that the extruder screw is filled virtually pressure-free with the preheated material.

"The extruder always has the ideal filling level and is never overfilled, which makes it much better to regulate," says Michael Heitzinger, chief technical officer at Erema.

The company says the new Intarema system is also more flexible and reliable, and can adapt well to input changes because feed material is buffered and homogenized for constant extruder feeding.

The company reports that development trials with in-house waste from linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) blow film production document the effect of the Counter Current system on the increased process stability, productivity and flexibility of the new Intarema plant. "Besides extremely easy operation, a stable and sensitive recycling process is essential to be able to ensure recycling rates of 100 percent high-quality recyclate in virgin material grade, particularly when processing clean in-house waste from production," Heitzinger explains.

Although input material often fluctuates in terms of moisture, compactness and other parameters, Erema says, the technology is designed to ensure that the throughput and quality of the recycled pellets produced remain at a constantly high level.

Erema says the new system offers flexibility when processing materials with particularly high input moisture and contamination levels, such as washed agricultural films, washed postconsumer film flakes (PE-LD, PE-LLD, PE-HD), films with solid content such as paper, wood or metals and also thick-walled regrind materials from waste automobile and electronic goods, PS cups and PE lids.

The system also features the company’s "Smart Start" concept, allowing many central process steps to run automatically, Erema says. Operators can also save all settings and parameters for the optimum result of a special recycling application under one "recipe name" and call it up through the push of a button, Erema says.
 
Intarema systems are also equipped with EcoSave technology designed to offer reduced energy consumption, a reduction in CO2 emissions and lower production costs.

Intarema recycling systems are offered in three series, Erema says: The T series features a short single-screw extruder without degassing and is designed for such materials as nonprinted edge trim, cutting waste, rolls and loose leftover film and regrind materials.

The TE series features double degassing for the processing of slightly printed production or industrial waste plus fibers and technical plastics.

The patented Intarema TVEplus extruder system is designed for the recycling of materials that are difficult to process such as heavily printed films or very moist materials. This is made possible through ultrafine filtration, thorough melt homogenization and high-performance degassing in a single step, Erema says.

The company reports that Intarema systems are available for capacities ranging from 50 to 3,000 kilograms per hour.