The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it will fund projects from states, tribes, territories and nonprofit organizations to help reduce food loss and waste and divert food waste from landfills by expanding anaerobic digester (AD) capacity in the United States.

According to a news release from the EPA, the organization is awarding up to $2 million in total AD funding. Individual projects could be in the range of $50,000 to $200,000 for the funding period of two years. 

All applications must achieve one or more of the following objectives: 

• develop new or expand existing AD capacity for processing food waste;
• demonstrate solutions and/or approaches for increasing food waste AD utilization that can be replicated by other communities, governments or other entities; and
• support state, tribal and/or local government programs that seek to use AD to increase their food waste diversion rates. 

The following entities are eligible to apply: 

• state, local, tribal, interstate and intrastate government agencies and instrumentalities; and 
• nonprofit organizations (as defined by 2 CFR Part 200) that are not 501(c)(4) organizations that lobby, including nonprofit educational institutions and nonprofit hospitals. 

In addition, up to $800,000 of the estimated total will be set aside for awards to the following organizations: 

• U.S. territories; 
• tribal governments; 
• tribal colleges and universities; or 
• eligible organizations located in persistent poverty counties. 

Applications are due by Oct. 7. The EPA also will host a webinar at 3 p.m. ET Aug. 21 to discuss the grant opportunity.

The Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) is urging the U.S. government to reinstate its mutilated coin redemption program, which was suspended in 2019. The move comes from the U.S. Mint’s request for comments regarding proposed revisions related to the exchange of damaged coins, updates to the redemption rates and procedures and acceptance and processing of bent and partial U.S. coins.

In its comments, which were sent to the U.S. Mint July 6, ISRI details the burden placed on recyclers when the program was suspended for a second time in 2019. The program previously was suspended in 2015.

ISRI also discusses the historical significance of recyclers recovering coins, which has become an integral part of many recycling companies’ operations, product mixes and bottom lines. 

“Shredding is the predominant method for recycling heavy steel‐bearing end-of-life products into commodity-grade products, including automobiles, appliances, coin-operated laundry machines and vending machines,” the statement says in part. “Shredding greatly improved recycling productivity with great benefits for environmental protection, natural resource conservation, manufacturing sustainability and reliability as well as worker safety.”

Additionally, ISRI’s comments highlight the potential dangers of the U.S. Mint’s proposal to prohibit the redemption of coins retrieved through the shredding process as it may drive some recyclers to return to less effective manual sorting and separation processes that unnecessarily increase the risks to workers.

“Without any indication that recyclers would not be eligible to redeem coins through this program, recyclers continue to collect coins from their shredding and downstream sorting and separation operations and now have over six years’ worth of mutilated coins stored at their facilities,” the statement says. “Accordingly, recyclers have lost significant revenues as a result of the program’s suspension.”

ISRI suggests two solutions to enable the U.S. Mint to continue accepting mutilated coins from recyclers and foreign sources. One of the solutions is a qualified redemption program that allows recyclers that demonstrate compliance with the Mint’s regulations to continue redeeming the value of mutilated coins collected over the years. The other recommendation is site inspections for recyclers to weed out any criminal activity such as fraud or intentionally damaging coins.

For nearly 40 years, River City Steel & Recycling has supplied south Texas mills with scrap. The company’s current owner, Justin Newell Triesch, also celebrates a milestone this year—he has been leading the operation for 30 years.

Alton S. Newell, Triesch’s grandfather, founder of Newell Recycling and pioneer of the first patented automobile and scrap metal shredder, established River City Steel & Recycling in 1982 in San Antonio. Newell opened the San Antonio business as an outlet for residential and commercial customers to dispose of unwanted scrap metal, according to information on the company’s website.

Justin Newell Triesch and his brother, Bobby Triesch, purchased River City Steel and Newell Recycling of Denver from their grandfather. The brothers ran the companies until 1996, when the brothers split the businesses.

“I stayed in San Antonio, and Bobby took over the Denver operation,” Triesch says. “I’ve been in control of this facility since 1996.”

Since the early 1990s, River City Steel has increased its processing capacity. In 1996, the company processed about 500 tons of shreddables and iron. Today, Triesch says the business processes 4,000 to 4,500 tons of shreddables and No. 1 heavy melting steel per month. He says investing in trucks and roll-off containers helped to boost its processing capacity.

“When we first started, we didn’t have any roll-offs,” he says. “Now, we have a fleet of four trucks with numerous roll-off boxes and trailers. That’s really helped bring in the tonnage, servicing manufacturing companies and oil field companies.”

River City Steel also has a stationary shear/logger/baler and several cutting heads to process the scrap. River City Steel primarily purchases and sells heavy metal plate and structural steel.

With its location in south Texas, oilfield companies are major customers of River City Steel.

“There are numerous oilfield companies—fracking, drilling,” Triesch says. “We service a lot of fracking companies. We supply south Texas and Mexican mills as well as export.”

A family-focused business

River City Steel & Recycling

During the four decades it’s been in business, River City Steel has operated as a family business. Triesch says his wife, Lina Triesch, oversees human resources and safety for the company.

River City Steel’s employee base has also grown from 22 in the 1990s to about 47 people today. Triesch says a few women are in leadership roles at the company.

“My head accountant is a woman, and a young lady I have on the scale had worked for my grandfather for years,” he says. “She’s the best scale person I’ve seen or had in all the places I’ve been around. She had experience working for my grandfather. When he retired, my uncle John Newell took over, and when he retired, she said, ‘I would like to stay on with the family.’

“The young lady running the accounting department came to us right out of college. She just proved herself very knowledgeable in accounting, working with the banks. She’s very good, very loyal and a lot of fun to work with and has been with us for more than 13 years now.”

Triesch adds that he gets inspiration from his grandfather, trying to run the business as he did with a focus on customer service. Triesch spends most of his time outside dealing with operations and helping customers.

“I really enjoy the processing part of the business,” Triesch says. “I love the hands-on side of it. I try to strive like my grandfather did and treat people the way he did. Treat people how you want to be treated and just get to know your customers. Be outside with them. You see your regular customers several days a week—I saw [my grandfather] do that. I saw so many people go up to him, shake his hand. He was always asking them about them and their families.”

Altem, a recycler of packaging scrap based in Strasbourg, France, has partnered with Helsinki-based ZenRobotics, a supplier of sorting robots for the waste and recycling industry, to use its artificial intelligence- (AI-) based sorting for colored polyethylene terephthalate (PET) quality control at its facility. Alteem’s sorting center is dedicated to sorting and conditioning household scrap. The company sorts about 50,000 metric tons of scrap per year. Altem is part of the Schroll Group, which operates 15 recycling plants in France.

According to a news release from ZenRobotics, the ZenRobotics Fast Picker will help Altem remove contaminants from a flow of colored PET bottles to ensure high purity.

“The product we sort today will be different from the product we sort tomorrow,” says Guillaume Schroll, who is in charge of Altem’s sorting center. “What we want to do with the robot is to follow this evolution and ensure that the robot can help us adapt to the different sorting operations that will have to be done in the future.”

ZenRobotics says the new Fast Picker has been placed on Altem’s plastic sorting line for quality control of colored PET. The Fast Picker will extract residual contaminants so that the flow producd at the end of the line is pure, colored PET.

“Fast Picker is a product that gives us enough confidence in the future and in the various adaptations that we’ll have to make according to the evolution of waste flows entering the sorting center,” Schroll says.

He adds that the company’s partnership with ZenRobotics was built based on dialogue. He says, “What reassured us about this cooperation was the fact that we could constantly engage with ZenRobotics and there was a response. We want to develop the robot with them and they want to develop our sorting methods with the robot.”