The California Department of Industrial Relations' (DIR) Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has issued seven citations totaling $111,935 in penalties to EDCO Waste and Recycling Services, Lemon Grove, Calif. The agency says EDCO has a history of safety violations and worker injury.

In a Cal/OSHA release, Christine Baker, DIR’s director, says, "EDCO Waste and Recycling Services Inc. failed to provide vital safety training, leading to dangerous accidents and serious injury. Proper workplace safety training is critical because it reduces severity of harm following accidents and, more importantly, prevents accidents from occurring in the first place."

Cal/OSHA's citations include a serious and willful violation and serious accident-related violations that resulted in a severe injury to a worker at EDCO. Cal/OSHA had previously cited this company for the same problems that led to this recent worker injury.

The new citations resulted from an accident and serious worker injury on Dec. 31, 2011 while workers were connecting a hydraulic cylinder to the packer device in a garbage truck. The hydraulic system was activated to extend the cylinder outward to be connected to a packer truck. The injured worker was standing on a packer unit inside the truck body when the cylinder struck it, causing the worker to fall into an area between the packer and the truck body wall where he sustained crushing injuries.

Cal/OSHA had previously conducted an inspection at the company’s facility in Oct. 2011 following a refuse truck accident resulting in severe injuries to a mechanic. Cal/OSHA found that EDCO had not ensured that control levers were blocked as required, resulting in severe injuries to a mechanic. EDCO appealed Cal/OSHA's findings and citations.

Following the December accident, Cal/OSHA successfully petitioned the California Appeals Board to raise a citation category from serious accident related to willful. In 2003, EDCO also received a serious citation for not having employees use lockable controls on a compacter and failing to have adequate written safety procedures.

Cal/OSHA issued serious accident- related citations to EDCO for their failure to guard the pinch point in the garbage truck, failure to have a hazardous energy control plan and failure to implement procedures to control or lock movement of the equipment while workers are performing maintenance or repairs. Two general citations and one regulatory citation were also issued for not establishing an injury illness prevention program and a heat illness prevention program and for not developing or training to written operating rules for mobile collection/compactions equipment.

Business event organizer Messe München International has scheduled the first IFAT India trade fair for Oct. 24-26, 2013, at the Bombay Convention & Exhibition Centre (BCEC) in Mumbai.

The new event, being organized by Messe München and its subsidiary MMI India, extends the IFAT brand of trade shows for the environmental technology sector to India.

The organizers have announced they expect to attract 100 exhibitors and 6,000 visitors and to take up nearly 65,000 square feet (6,000 square meters) of exhibition space.

"The Indian market for environmental services is set to grow to a total volume of€ 3.2 billion ($3.9 billion) by 2013,” says Eugen Egetenmeir, managing director of Messe München International. “Increasing urbanization and greater environmental consciousness in India are leading to a growing demand for modern environmental technologies and services. This is what our new event is focusing on.”

Messe München organizes IFAT Entsorga, which it bills as the world’s largest environmental technology trade fair, in Munich every two years and IE expo in Shanghai. The two events are among the approximately 40 trade shows organized by the group, many of them held at the Messe München exhibition center, the ICM (International Congress Center München) and in the MOC Veranstaltungscenter München.

Capital Scrap Metal LLC (CSM), based in Deerfield Beach, Fla., has announced the purchase of Pompano Scrap Metal, located in Pompano Beach, Fla. The newly acquired facility is about four miles from the processing site CSM refers to as its flagship location.

The addition of the 10-acre full service scrap metal facility will enable Capital Scrap Metal to expand its current market share in the South Florida region, the company says in a mid-July news release.

With this new acquisition, Capital Scrap Metal says it will be able to process “larger volumes of automotive scrap, heavy equipment and unprepared steel.”

Equipment at the site will include an Acculoader high-speed container loader, 90-foot Rice Lake scales, a Sierra RB 6000 logger, numerous Caterpillar and Komatsu excavators and several John Deere front end loaders. The facility will house a nonferrous warehouse and numerous Peterbilt roll off trucks, according to the CSM news releases.

The new location is about 45 minutes from the Port of Miami and 25 minutes from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, providing CSM with what it calls direct access to offshore shipments and international markets. The company will continue to purchase scrap from the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach tri-county region, it says.

A group of European plastics converters, recyclers and collectors have completed a two-year project that looks at steps that can be taken to boost the use of post-consumer plastic scrap.

The culmination of the project is the release of a new program, called EuCertPlast, which implements existing CEN standard 14343 on post-consumer plastics recycling. Participants in the program say that the new standard will boost the use of post-consumer plastic.

The project was conducted by European Plastics Recyclers (EuPR) and the European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery Organisations (EPRO) in collaboration with the European Plastics Converters (EuPC), the European Association unoriented Polyester Films (EuPET), Recovinyl, the German company Cyclos GmbH and a few plastics recycling companies to perform the first pilot audits at factory level.

“I am very happy with the outcome of this project in which we have been able to demonstrate that good practices on post-consumer plastics recycling should be rewarded with a European Certificate and this will boost the use of recyclates in Europe by plastics converters. I strongly advise purchasers of post-consumer plastics recyclates to request this EuCertPlast Certificate from their suppliers in order to guarantee good quality product,” says Alexandre Dangis, managing director of EuPC.

“Converters are ready to use more post-consumer plastics recyclates and this European certification scheme will contribute to more potential for higher plastics recycling targets in Europe. Additionally, the Blue Angel scheme will implement EuCertPlast as from 2013. Thus, consumer will have the assurance of buying eco-friendly products,” Dangis adds.

Ton Emans, president of the EuPR, says, “A suitable harmonized auditing scheme for Europe was needed due to the difficulty in gaining access to plastics waste from the different and often complex national systems. Now, with EuCertPlast, a level playing field has been created and plastics recyclers can work with all national collection schemes to get access to raw materials for further treatment in Europe. This is a major step forward for our young industry, and we are keen to develop more plastics recycling activities and create more employment. The quality of EuCertPlast is based on existing European Standards and audited according to the best available “German” auditor scheme.

“I would like to thank in particular Cyclos GmbH for having accepted to work with us in this project. The procedure to accredit new auditors has now started and will enable to have a good and standardized pool of EuCertPlast auditors," he adds.

Francis Huysman, co-chairman of the EPRO, says, “EPRO is pleased to have taken a key role in the development of this European wide auditing scheme. It will enable our members, which include some of the largest plastics recovery organizations in Europe, to have confidence that recyclers holding this certification will process their plastics to the highest possible operational and environmental standards. COREPLA, the Italian plastics recovery organization, has already announced that it intends to base the regulatory compliance of its recyclers on the EuCertPlast standard, and I am confident that other schemes will also take this approach. Our members look forward to working in partnership with EuCertPlast certified recyclers to increase the levels of plastics recovery and recycling in Europe still further.”

Eric Criel, Recovinyl general manager, says, “EuCertPlast will enable Recovinyl to precisely assess the quantity and tractability of the material recycled within the VinylPlus voluntary agreement. Furthermore, we’ll also get the guarantee that the recycling phase occurred in an environmental sound manner.”