DataKillers, a Maryland-based electronics recycling company, has signed an agreement to merge with the United States operations of Cork, Ireland-based Wisetek Solutions Ltd. The Irish firm provides information technology asset disposal (ITAD) and data destruction services.

The combined company will become one of the largest suppliers of refurbished IT equipment in the world, according to a Wisetek news release.

“This is a key strategic move for Wisetek that supports our combined customer requirement for standardized services delivery, to ensure that their critical data destruction and IT asset disposal operations meet their stringent data security and CSR [corporate social responsibility] environmental standards,” says Sean Sheehan, Wisetek CEO.

Chris Scott, president and CEO of Computer Discounters Inc., the parent company of DataKillers, says regarding the response of corporate clients, “Our joining together has already proven to be a welcome development by these combined clients to deliver the global services they require from a single source.”

DataKillers’ U.S. coverage, combined with Wisetek’s presence in Europe and Asia, is expected by the two companies to provide considerable market synergies. Additionally, DataKillers is certified to the e-Stewards standard, and Wisetek is certified to Europe’s WEEELABEX recycling standard.

TOMRA Sorting Recycling, a Germany-based business unit of Norway-based TOMRA Systems ASA, has announced it will supply 40 AutoSort optical sorting units to three materials recovery facilities (MRFs) operated by SKM Recycling of Coolaroo, Victoria, Australia.

TOMRA indicates SKM is building three new plants to process more than 350,000 metric tons per year of single-stream curbside collected material. The primary focus of the SKM plants is to process paper, plastics, metals and glass, sorting them into high-quality products, according to TOMRA. The plants are expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2018.

SKM’s Laverton plant “aims to become the most technically advanced and automated recyclables processing plant on the continent or even worldwide by integrating multiple steps of TOMRA Sorting technology into the sorting of paper and other recyclables,” according to TOMRA.

The sorting technology is being deployed with the intention of resulting in a greater percentage of recyclable product being extracted from the residential recycling stream; reducing materials unnecessarily ending up in landfill; and facilitating the development of new recyclable grades to meet the demands of a changing market and deliver greater environmental benefits, TOMRA indicates.

“We are convinced by TOMRA’s robust and dependable technology, but it’s their ability to support in creating the best plant concepts that made us choose to partner with TOMRA,” says Robert Italiano, business manager of SKM. “Our confidence in their technical knowledge and support is unwavering and is backed by TOMRA’s guarantee to perform. We are proud to be developing the most advanced materials recovery facilities in Australia.”

Tom Jansen, sales manager at TOMRA Sorting Recycling, says, “Winning such a big contract means SKM have placed a lot of trust in TOMRA and our newest technology. I’m looking forward to seeing the ultra-modern plants in operation.”

SKM Recycling, established in 1999, provides recycling services to local councils and businesses in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales.

TOMRA Sorting Recycling designs and manufactures sensor-based sorting technologies for the global recycling and waste management industry, with more than 4,900 systems installed in 50 countries worldwide. 

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) says its program to bring increased recycling activity to 46 cities in China is advancing, and tied the programs into a stated intention of reducing the nation’s dependence on imported scrap materials.

In a news release issued Jan. 2, 2018, the MEP referred to a program it says was announced in March 2016 requiring 46 cities to carry out “mandatory garbage sorting by the end of 2020.” Under the plan, all public institutions and companies are required to separate hazardous waste, kitchen waste and recyclable materials, according to the MEP.

By the end of November 2017, 12 cities had adopted laws and regulations on garbage sorting, while 24 had introduced work programs related to the issue, according to Wang Menghui, China’s minister of housing and urban-rural development.

In the same news release, the MEP says it also has “tightened control on imported solid waste, often referred to as ‘foreign garbage.” The agency refers to its July 2017 plan for banning imports “of 24 types of solid waste, including plastic waste, unsorted paper waste, crude textile waste and vanadium slag waste by the end of 2017.”

Adds the MEP, in a seeming endorsement of protectionist trade policies, “Importing garbage that can be replaced by domestic resources will be phased out by the end of 2019. The types and amount of garbage imports will be cut down steadily.”

The MEP news release refers to Guo Jing, chief of the International Department at MEP, as saying that imported scrap materials “played a part in making up for a domestic shortage of resources in the past, but as the economy and society have developed, the drawbacks of this practice have emerged, including environmental pollution and health threats.” States Guo, “Foreign garbage has been widely denounced.”

The MEP’s release also indicates that, “Despite the strict control, some companies still take risks to make profits by importing foreign garbage illegally,” and comments that several Chinese government agencies “have acted together to strengthen regulation and crack down on illicit garbage imports.”

From February to December 2017, agencies in China filed 298 criminal cases against “garbage smuggling,” investigated and verified 866,800 tons of materials involved, and detained 421 suspects, says the MEP.

While disdaining “foreign garbage,” in the same news release the MEP points to a program in Beijing's Tongzhou district involving more than 2,500 restaurants whose food scraps are being collected and consolidated.

By the end of October 2017, more than 4 million households in Shanghai had registered to get reward credits “if they throw away garbage in line with recycling requirements,” adds the MEP.

The MEP news release quotes Ying Yong, mayor of Shanghai, as saying, “Improving the city's ability in harm-free waste disposal and recycling is even more important than building a couple more skyscrapers. We should speed up the construction of terminal garbage disposal facilities.”

A scrap metals processor with operations in Guangdong province in south China has told Recycling Today that a first batch of scrap materials import licenses and quota amounts for 2018 was issued in late 2017, with a second batch following shortly in early January 2018.

The two lists, currently available in the Chinese language only, indicate that Hong Kong-based Chiho Environmental Group (CEG, formerly Chiho-Tiande) has received a 2018 scrap materials import license and quota amount, which was confirmed to Recycling Today Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018, by a CEG corporate officer.

Previous announcements from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) have indicated that the trade in scrap motors has been targeted for restrictions. However, while the recycler says CEG and one other company have been granted permission to import motors in 2018, only a few import licenses have so far been issued to processors of wire and cable scrap.

The same processor also reports that no import licenses in this first batch were issued to any companies in the Nanhai district near Guangzhou in Guangdong province. In the 1990s and well into the next decade, Nanhai was a hub for the recycling of motors, mixed shredded metals, wire and cable and other forms of copper-bearing scrap. Its importance as a processing hub has faded as more material has been steered into government-sponsored resource parks in outlying towns designed to host scrap processing operations.

The first two sets of import quotas consisted largely of metals recyclers in Taizhou and other parts of Zhejiang province, located on China’s east coast about 180 miles south of Shanghai. A few locations in Ningbo, closer to Shanghai, also received quotas, including a quota for Ningbo Lianfang Chemical Fiber Co. Ltd. to import PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic scrap other than baled beverage bottles.

None of the quotas issued and seen by Recycling Today appears to have gone to importers of recovered fiber, only four of them are for plastics scrap, and the other 90 or so are for ferrous or nonferrous metal or metal-bearing appliances.