Nonmetallics

FILLING A NEED

Grinding and reusing engineered plastics, such as those found in computer components, has proven to be a challenge to recyclers.

A Massachusetts recycler is trying to use the ground plastic made from recycled computer components as an ingredient in a pothole filling mixture. The American Plastics Council, Washington, and the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection, co-hosted a press event this spring at a facility operated by Coniglario Industries Inc., Framingham, Mass.

Coniglario Industries is grinding 25,000 pounds per day of plastics culled from obsolete computer and electronic equipment. Part of that amount is being used as a pothole filler. The method the company uses to include the reground plastic into a usable road-patching mix was developed by the firm, and is thus far a proprietary process used only by Coniglario Industries. The ground plastic is a key ingredient in a product used both as pothole filler and as highway underlayment. The resulting road patch has been tested in Florida and Massachusetts and applied in the city of Framingham.

While the nation’s potholes would seem to offer a considerable end market, the current and future supply of obsolete computers will require that markets of that size be found, notes Robert S. Krebs of the American Plastics Council. Recyclers “will need thoughtful, innovative solutions on-hand and ready to meet the challenge of an endless stream of outdated plastic computer and electronic equipment as well as ways to reuse the plastics material,” says Krebs.

“Computers, printers, CRT consoles, copier housings, paper trays and scanners, among dozens of other products can be turned from waste into a new, lightweight asphalt-type mixture,” he adds.

Coniglario Industries markets its plastic-bearing pothole/cold patch application as a lighter weight mixture that can provide considerable fuel savings to state departments of transportation.

NEW FACILITY IN HOUSTON

Custom Polymers Inc. (CPI), Charlotte, N.C., has opened a facility in Houston. The post-industrial plastics recycler offers grinding, sorting, metal separation and repackaging at the new facility.

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An elevated cab is one of several features improving operational efficiency at the Macon County Solid Waste Management agency in North Carolina. When it comes to waste management, efficiency, safety and reliability are priorities driving decisions from day one, according to staff members of the Macon County Solid Waste Management Department in western North Carolina. The agency operates a recycling plant in a facility originally designed to bale incoming materials. More recently, the building has undergone significant transformations centered around one machine: a SENNEBOGEN telehandler (telescopic handler).

CPI supplies processors with reprocessed, reground and off-spec raw materials. On the generation side, the company implements recycling programs for manufacturers generating thermoplastic scrap.