FPD Recycling's FPD Pro machine helps electronics recyclers reduce their exposure to mercury and hazardous chemicals.
FPD Recycling
FPD Recycling debuts robotic depollution machine
FPD Recycling has introduced a robotic depollution machine for electronics recyclers that reduces human exposure to mercury, other hazardous chemicals in screens.
Mercury is considered by the World Health Organization as a top chemical that is of major public health concern, and traditional methods of recycling screens can expose workers in the recycling industry to toxic materials, such as mercury and lead.
Paudy O’Brien, CEO and founder of FPD Recycling, which has U.S. offices in Lakewood, Colorado, says he recognized the dangers of recycling electronics that contained cathode ray tubes (CRT) or cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL), which contain mercury. He adds that many electronics recycling conferences address the risks when working with materials containing CRT.
“At nearly every conference, someone is talking about issues with CRT,” O’Brien says. “Look at the problems that CRT caused and has been causing. We saw the same problems with CCFL with mercury. It seemed like an obvious problem that needed a solution.”
So, O’Brien’s company worked to develop a solution to help electronics recyclers reduce their exposure to mercury and hazardous chemicals as well as improve efficiency with operations with a new tool. Several partners have helped FPD Recycling in the development and financing of the technology, including O’Brien, who has 15 years of experience in the energy sector and information technology; Craig Thompson, who helped with the U.K.’s first franchised collection network for WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) recycling; Arthur Middleton, who is a chartered engineer with more than 30 years’ experience in factory automation and machine design; Austin Ryan, who is co-founder of Ireland-based AMCs; Gary Moloney, who has 15 years of experience in software engineering; and Declan Lynch, who is a chartered accountant with 20 years of experience.
In September, FPD Recycling debuted the FPD Pro robotic depollution machine during the E-Scrap Conference in Orlando, Florida. O’Brien says the FPD Pro depollutes TVs, monitors and laptops by removing all hazardous materials from them, which allows the processed waste, which can be viewed as hazardous, to be treated as any normal electronic waste since the robot removes the hazards.
“Safety is key,” he says. “[FPD Pro] eliminates exposing workers to hazard.”
When developing the FPD Pro earlier this year, FPD Recycling partnered with Ecocycle, a mercury-handling electronics recycler in Australia to test the technology.
FPD Recycling
Paudy O'Brien
O’Brien adds that electronics recyclers have the ability to lease the FPD Pro robot. He says most prospective customers are planning to use either five- or 10-year leases on the robot.
“This can be installed at a low capital rate for recyclers,” he says, adding that by leasing, FPD Recycling takes care of the machine’s maintenance. “They can increase revenues by having low capital deployment. They don’t have any hidden costs; it’s transparent and gives the recycler what they need to recycle this type of hazardous waste.”
The FPD Pro can be used on screens that range in size from 11 inches to 70 inches. O’Brien says recyclers can use it on just about any brand, including Dell, Toshiba, Apple, Samsung and Panasonic. He adds that FPD Pro users can choose whether to disassemble or shred the electronics after they use the robot to depollute it. “Depending on the recycler, they get to choose what to do next.”
The FPD Pro is available to market across the world. O’Brien adds that it offers recyclers a safe tool that helps to reduce labor.
Sanitation workers continue protests at Republic Services
Employee strikes over wages, healthcare benefits and retirement security have rippled across the country since Aug. 29.
Republic Services sanitation workers have continued to engage in protests and intermittent work stoppages amid contract disputes with the Phoenix-based company.
Members of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston began their strike on Aug. 29 to protest Republic's refusal during contract negotiations to offer comparable wages, healthcare benefits and retirement security that workers at other area Republic facilities receive, according to a release from the Teamsters.
Coinciding with the Massachusetts protests, Republic Services/Allied Waste workers at the company's Newby Island Resource Recovery Park in San Jose, California—including recycling, organics, mechanics, collection and administrative employees—exercised their right to refuse to cross a picket line Sept. 5. Workers in Fremont, California, and Fall River, Massachusetts, followed suit Sept. 6.
Workers in Cumming, Georgia, who are members of Teamsters Local 728 in Atlanta, joined the strike Sept. 9, and workers in McDonough and Winder, Georgia, and Evansville, Indiana, staged protests of their own.
On Oct. 3-4, hundreds more Republic Services/Allied Waste workers belonging to Teamsters Local 38, Local 117, Local 174 and Local 763 honored picket lines that had extended to the Seattle area.
Then, on Oct. 6, two of the company’s sanitation employees, along with supporters from Unite the Union, which represents refuse collectors across Great Britain, protested Microsoft founder Bill Gates at his appearance at the Cambridge Union Society in Cambridge, England. Gates was on hand as the recipient of the organization’s 2019 Professor Hawking Fellowship, named after the professor and physicist Stephen Hawking.
Gates is Republic Services' biggest shareholder. His personal investment manager, Michael Larson, also sits on Republic's board of directors.
Bernie Egan-Mullen, a member of Teamsters Local 25, says in a news release that ideally during the latest round of protests, Gates would have directed Republic to improve working conditions according to the workers’ requests. He added that Hawking was a long-time champion of the National Health Service, the U.K.’s publicly funded national healthcare system.
"I'm guessing [Hawking] would be shocked at how much we have to pay for healthcare,” Egan-Mullen says. “Meanwhile we are paid, on average, 40 percent below what it takes to make a living wage for a family with one adult and one child.”
Republic says its drivers in Marshfield averaged approximately $80,000 in wages last year, not including a benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, AD&D and disability insurance, a company-matched 401(k) retirement plan and "generous" paid time off. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Living Wage calculator, the living wage in Massachusetts for one adult and one child in 2019 is $29.66 an hour, or $61,693 before taxes. The average salary in Massachusetts in 2019 is $72,657, according to ZipRecruiter.
Republic has called the Teamsters' bargaining demands "unrealistic" and says in addition to the strikes, union members have engaged in "unlawful harassing, threatening and intimidating conduct and unsafe actions on community roads." The company adds that regular collection services have continued in several cities around Massachusetts with the help of law enforcement.
"The strike quickly devolved into union-orchestrated violence, stalking, threats and racial slurs, as well as interference with trash collection by moving customer waste receptacles and blocking trucks. Union members also began engaging in dangerous practices on community roadways, including swerving and abruptly stopping in front of waste and recycling collection vehicles," Republic says in a statement.
“We are grateful to our employees from around the country who have come to Marshfield to help us fulfill our commitment to the communities we serve,” says Gail Vanasse, general manager of Republic Services of Marshfield, Massachusetts. “We take pride in providing our employees with outstanding compensation and benefits, and we will continue to negotiate in good faith to achieve a fair and competitive labor contract.”
Demetrius Tart, a member of Teamsters Local 728 of Atlanta, however, says Republic's wages and benefits are still not enough.
“Republic workers put their lives on the line every day to protect the public health. We came to Cambridge to spread message that sanitation workers in America have the fifth most deadly job, and Bill Gates made $100 million in Republic stock dividends last year while their workers were forced to decide between paying for their family's healthcare or putting food on the table," Tart says in a news release.
Republic employs 36,000 people around the country and provides service to 14 million customers.
The Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF) pilot program is researching ways to recycle flexible plastic packaging.
Pennsylvania-based J.P. Mascaro’s TotalRecycle facility is starting to recycle flexibles this fall as part of the Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF) pilot program.
Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) is about two times more prevalent in packaging materials than polyethylene terephthalate (PET), according to Susan Graff, principal and vice president of global corporate sustainability at Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), Ann Arbor, Michigan. She says the U.S. generates about 12 million pounds of flexible plastics per year.
However, LDPE faces more challenges than PET in terms of its recyclability.
“Right now, the markets are telling us that this material doesn’t have value,” Graff says. “However, we know in other parts of the world, like Europe and Australia, there are companies using this material to make all kinds of building materials and infrastructure materials. So, we know this material has value to those markets. It’s just in the U.S., where we were really dependent on China forever, now since China’s market has disappeared, we don’t have the domestic markets to say we want this material.”
Graff says this begs the question: If flexible plastics are so popular as a packaging product, how can companies ensure they can be recycled to make more useful products?
From 2015 to 2016, RRS researched whether flexible plastic packaging could be separated in residential single-stream recycling facilities for the MRFF initiative. The researchers concluded that existing optical sorting and material recovery facility (MRF) separating technology can be used to effectively and efficiently sort flexible plastic packaging in single-stream recycling.
With this knowledge, the MRFF team decided to partner with a MRF to perform a pilot study on capturing flexible plastic packaging in single-stream recycling. To find the right MRF for the job, Graff says the MRFF team screened many MRFs based on several factors, including the size, age, degree of automation and the readiness of the MRF’s management team.
Graff says not many MRFs are designed to handle flexible plastic packaging. She notes that many MRFs are “processing 2019 tons using 2012 technology” and are in strict contracts with municipalities. She adds that some MRFs are “hamstrung to innovate” as a result of their contracts and wouldn’t work as candidates for this project.
“We wanted innovators who were looking to figure out how to adapt to the evolving ton,” she says.
About two years ago, J.P. Mascaro & Sons, Audubon, Pennsylvania, learned about the MRFF initiative. Joseph Paul Mascaro Sr., director of TotalRecycle at J.P. Mascaro & Sons, says he thought the company’s TotalRecycle MRF in Exeter Township, Pennsylvania, would be a great fit for the pilot project, so he reached out to Graff to nominate his MRF.
“I picked up an article [on the MRFF initiative] and it seemed like we were the type of facility they were looking for,” Mascaro says. “It basically said they wanted a 35-ton-per-hour MRF that was willing to combat an issue in the industry.”
The MRFF initiative selected the TotalRecycle MRF for its pilot program. Graff says the TotalRecycle MRF fit the goal of the pilot project really well because it’s a “large, high-speed and automated MRF.”
“Those are the most scalable with regard to accelerating the capture of this material,” she says. “They had this culture of innovation; they had a new MRF. Their customers wanted to recycle materials that could be potentially used for products in domestic manufacturing. And they see where they can be economically successful with this.”
The TotalRecycle MRF opened in January 2016, and it handles about 12,000 tons of material per month at full capacity. Mascaro adds that he also had an interest in trying to recover flexible plastic packaging to make what he calls “rFlex” bales.
“We were trying to be proactive,” he says. “Once I spoke to RRS and to Susan, I realized that we would be stupid to not try to move forward with [the MRFF pilot]. It’s a very noble cause and it’s the right thing to do. It’s a very different way of going about recycling.”
Graff adds that the TotalRecycle MRF also had the right company culture for this project. “What we found at J.P. Mascaro & Sons was a culture of innovation,” she says. “Projects don’t just work because of machinery; they work because of the people involved.”
Getting ready for flexibles
Before getting involved with the MRFF pilot project, the TotalRecycle facility featured four optical sorters as well as antiwrap screens. The company had to add four more optical sorters upon starting the MRFF pilot program, though. Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, Norwalk, Connecticut, installed the four optical sorters from Tomra, Norway, as well as a Lubo 440 antiwrap screens at the TotalRecycle facility. Mascaro says the company is using optical sorters on its paper lines to sort out flexibles from fibers.
Graff adds that other peripheral equipment and systems were integrated to make sure the facility could properly recycle film plastics. The MRFF team negotiated a grant memorandum of agreement so that members of the pilot project’s value chain—brands, retailers and trade associations—could co-invest with J.P. Mascaro to pay for this new equipment for the MRFF pilot program.
J.P. Mascaro finished equipment installations for this project in February. Although the company didn’t formally start collecting film plastics from community members until this fall, it did test the machines to see how they handled film plastic already seeping into the recycling stream.
“About 1 percent of our stream is [film] plastics,” Mascaro says. “We had enough of it to tune our equipment.”
Since starting to test equipment to recycle film plastics, Mascaro says he and his team have had to focus on ensuring material spreads out better on belts so that optical sorters can perform better.
Mascaro adds that he has also had to communicate changes to the material stream clearly to employees. “You’re telling workers, ‘Hey, remember that thing you picked out in mass quantity every day? Let [plastic film] go. It’s not a problem anymore,’” he says.
However, Mascaro says employees were generally excited to hear that they wouldn’t need to worry about picking out plastic bags anymore. He says it has also been exciting to have MRFF initiative partners like PepsiCo and other companies visit the TotalRecycle facility in recent months.
J.P. Mascaro & Sons
J.P. Mascaro & Sons opened its material recovery facility (MRF) in Exeter Township, Pennsylvania, in 2016.
This fall, the TotalRecycle officially began collecting film plastics to recycle from the city of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The company chose Pottstown as its first community for film plastics collection because of its proximity to the TotalRecycle facility and because it met other project requirements, such as curbside recyclables being collected in wheeled carts.
Mascaro will begin collecting flexible plastic packaging curbside this fall. As part of the lead up to the program, the company is notifying residents of the types of flexible plastic packaging that can be collected for recycling.
Mascaro says several communities the company serves has been interested in the MRFF pilot project and recycling flexibles, but he adds that J.P. Mascaro is taking a tiered approach with rolling this capability out to other communities gradually. Earlier this year, the company met with more than 100 local community coordinators in February to educate them on the MRFF pilot and plans to roll it out.
“That had a great response,” Graff says of the meeting with community coordinators. “J.P. is a fourth-generation member of the company and is known in his community, so he had a huge turnout in February. In April, they had an end-market showcase with a dozen or so end-market manufacturers and intermediary processors who could evaluate the material, sign up to get test material when J.P. Mascaro’s bales are ready and then bid on procuring the material.”
Graff adds that everyone involved on the MRFF pilot project has been working as quickly as possible to find a solution to recycle flexibles, but she says it’s more important that everything is thoroughly tested.
“We want to address challenges like moisture and use of peripheral equipment to make sure everything is just right before we leave J.P. Mascaro to successfully move forward with this on its own,” she says.
J.P. Mascaro has committed to participating in the MRFF initiative for at least 24 months, but Mascaro says he wants to keep working on this project—even if it takes longer—to make sure it’s perfected. He and others on the MRFF pilot program hope to prove the feasibility of recycling flexibles so that other MRFs across the U.S. may implement similar models in the future.
“This project should be a successful demonstration on a way to clean up fiber streams and gain a new commodity, which is flexibles,” he says. “We’re cleaning up fiber lines, creating a new commodity and lowering our residue rate. Those are wins for MRFs.
“It’s been really exciting and a privilege to work with this consortium,” he continues. “This is a revolutionary project, but it’s a lot of work. We are trying our best to help accomplish a significant goal.”
The company adds that it hopes the pilot program will generate data to show interested municipalities that flexible plastic packaging recycling is possible and economical and that there is a market for rFlex bales.
For a video about the MRFF pilot project, click here.
DS Smith, a sustainable packaging company based in the United Kingdom, has announced plans to expand its coffee cup recycling program to Europe through its De Hoop Mill in the Netherlands. The launch, which follows a successful trial at the mill, aims to reduce the amount of coffee cups that end up in landfill or incineration, DS Smith reports in a news release on the expansion of this program.
The recyclers first introduced a recycling approach for its cups at its Kemsley Paper Mill in the United Kingdom. As a result of efforts by DS Smith and others in the industry, coffee cup recycling has increased from 1 in 400 to 1 in 25 cups over the past two years in the U.K., the company reports in a news release. The packaging company reports that it hopes to find similar results in Europe with the expansion of this program.
“While we’re a continent of coffee lovers, we need to work together to ensure that we are not negatively impacting the environment and single-use coffee cups do not end up in landfill,” says Miles Roberts, group CEO of DS Smith. “We’re proud to be able to export our successful recycling formula to Europe. But we need help: Our biggest challenge remains getting hold of the cups. We’re calling on governments to work closely with us to solve the problem of supply and ensure consumers put cups in separate recycling bins, knowing that they aren’t just recycled in theory, but in practice, too.”
At the initial De Hoop Mill trial in the Netherlands, DS Smith worked alongside U.K.-based waste management company Renewi, its collection partner, to recycle more than 100,000 disposable coffee cups. Further trials are also underway ahead of a launch later this year.
DS Smith reports that it has 14 mills across Europe and has the capacity to tackle the continent’s coffee cup waste problem.
Association of Equipment Manufacturers
ConExpo Latin America 2019 draws 20,000 attendees
Co-located learning opportunities highlight industry trends and best practices in the region.
ConExpo Latin America 2019 concluded a “successful run” Oct. 2-5 in Chile with a high-quality event that garnered praise and positive support from attendees and exhibitors.
In addition to exhibits and a demo area of the latest construction equipment, products, technologies and services for the region, ConExpo Latin America 2019 featured co-located learning opportunities from industry organizations, according to a news release from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), which hosts the event.
“We thank all show participants for their support; we achieved our goal of offering a top-quality event with real value for exhibitors and attendees,” says Fred Vieira, ConExpo Latin America show director and AEM director of international exhibitions and events. “We are committed to providing a platform that connects buyers and sellers and business solutions to help them succeed as the regional economy continues to improve.”
More than 20,000 registrants from dozens of countries attended the event. Attendees had access to more than 600 exhibitors from ConExpo Latin America 2019 and the co-located Expo Edifica with Expo Hormigon. ConExpo Latin America 2019 featured international exhibit pavilions from North America, China, Germany and Northern Ireland.
Leading industry organizations conducted learning opportunities at ConExpo Latin America 2019, including the International Road Federation (IRF), Alexandria, Virginia; National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO), Fairfax, Virginia; International Powered Access Federation (IPAF), United Kingdom; and the award-winning consulting firm Pezco Economics, Brazil.
“These co-located educational and learning events brought additional value to the show, and we greatly appreciate their participation to share their knowledge and expertise with attendees and exhibitors,” Vieira says.
The IRF Regional Congress on Asphalt Pavements targeted public and private sector professionals and focused on regional needs to help attendees construct high-quality roads and highway networks that meet expected demand.
NCCCO participated in the show’s equipment demo area with interactive crane and rigging activities to advance crane safety, and IPAF promoted safer use of mobile elevating work platforms with activities at its ConExpo Latin America 2019 stand.
The LatAm Economic Symposium featured regional expert economists from Pezco Economics. The sessions offered a macroeconomic outlook of selected economies and a closer look at the construction and infrastructure industries in Spanish-speaking markets, with the opportunity for interactions between presenters and exhibitors with attendees.
AEM will continue the cooperative partnership with the Chilean Chamber of Construction for the betterment of the construction and infrastructure industry in Latin America.
“Latin America is an important business region for many AEM members and for our exhibitors, and AEM has worked cooperatively for many years with the Chilean Chamber of Construction,” AEM President Dennis Slater says. “We value this relationship and look forward to many more years of cooperation in continuing to advance the growth and prosperity of the industry.”
Megan Smalley
Posted by Kelly Maile
