With the help of a grant from New Zealand’s Waste Minimization Fund, Wellington, New Zealand-based Flight Group Ltd. has added a new wash line to what it calls the country’s first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling plant. The line, installed in 2017, was part of an NZ$8 million ($5.4 million), five-year investment program Flight started in 2012 to research and introduce the latest extrusion and thermoforming capability and capacity.

Flight Group was established in 1907 and initially made leather luggage. It is still privately held by members of the founding Osborne family. Flight moved into plastic production in the 1970s. It also has PET product manufacturing plants in Adelaide, Australia, and Romsey, United Kingdom.

Keith Smith, CEO of Flight Plastics Ltd., also based in Wellington, says the wash plant and other work at the facility enables Flight Plastic to produce thermoformed packaging made from recycled PET bottles. The company installed extrusion equipment to use recycled PET flakes starting in 2014, using imported flake to prove the process and establish a customer base.

The company had encouraging results, so the next step was to install its own wash plant. Flight Plastic has the capacity to recycle 6,000 metric tons of PET annually. It gets feedstock from curbside collections around the nation, which yields about 8,000 metric tons annually.

As a part of the investment in a wash plant, Flight Plastics installed a multisensor sorting line, including two bottle sorters and a flake sorter, with equipment from Sesotec GmbH of Germany.

Incoming PET bottles are feed to Sesotec‘s Varisort MN multisensor sorting system. This system was installed to separate PET bottles from other polymers using near-infrared sensor N as well as from metals using metal sensor M. Flight Plastics also decided to install a Varisort CN. This second unit is equipped with color sensors C and near-infrared sensor N for material identification and sorts and sorting into a transparent clear and a colored fraction.

Those sorted bottles are feed into a cutting mill, where they are cut to the desired flake size, and passed through a washing and drying process. In the next step Sesotec‘s Flake Purifier multisensory sorting system is used to perform a final cleaning of the PET flakes, removing any remaining off-colors, wrong polymers and small metal pieces. This multisensor configuration equipped with a high-resolution out-blast system allows high sorting efficiency combined with low material loss rates, Sesotec says. Depending on the application, the three sensors can be used individually or in combination.

French company Carbios says it has produced the first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles made completely with purified terephthalic acid (rPTA) that is produced through the company’s enzymatic bio-recycling process.

Alain Marty, chief scientific officer at Carbios, says, “We have successfully developed the first biological process with which all kinds of PET plastic waste can be broken down into its original components and reused to produce virgin plastic products for applications such as PET bottles. This new step shows the strong potential of Carbios’ enzymatic technology and provides a breakthrough solution to help solve society’s growing waste problem.”

Previously, the company said it had demonstrated that its proprietary bio-recycling technology, based on the use of bio-engineered enzymes, had the ability to turn PET scrap back into its original components at a rate of 97 percent in only 16 hours. Carbios also had demonstrated that virgin PET could be made with rPTA via its proprietary bio-recycling process, which uses all kinds of postconsumer PET plastic bottles (clear, colored, opaque, complex).

By demonstrating that its rPTA can be used to produce PET bottles that match brand and customer requirements, Carbios says “this technology proves to be a potential game-changer in the transition towards a circular economy that will benefit the environment and future generations.”

Jean-Claude Lumaret, CEO of Carbios, says, “The plastics industry faces fundamental challenges related to sustainability. Our technology, based on a circular model, reuses resources rather than consuming them. This new milestone takes us one step closer to bringing our technology to the market. With the construction of our demonstration plant to start later this year, we're aiming to engage the whole plastics industry in a transition towards a circular economy and take a leadership role as a global license provider for the bio-recycling of PET plastics and fibers.”

McKinney, Texas-based aluminum and copper wire producer Encore Wire Corp. is now using four wire and cable chopping machines supplied by Gold Hill, Oregon-based Sweed Machinery Inc.

Encore Wire has what it describes as “enormous production capacity” to make wire that is distributed widely throughout the United States. But the company’s process engineer Scott Thompson says its scrap processing capabilities lagged behind in sophistication. “We used to have a very labor intensive scrapping process,” Thompson says. “It was a huge labor cost and could potentially pose a hazard to employees.”

At first, the company updated its scrap processing system with a machine from a different equipment manufacturer. “It was a poorly designed and outdated machine,” Thompson says. “The only part of it that worked effectively was a small chopper by Sweed, and it worked really well.”

After considering that, Thompson called Sweed, who he says worked closely with him to understand Encore’s needs, capacity and goals. Four years later, Encore now has three additional Sweed machines customized to its needs, and its scrap processing system has never been more streamlined, according to Thompson.

“Sweed’s machines have exceeded expectations,” he says. Encore uses Sweed’s Model 5703 XHD scrap chopper and PCR 1034 pre-chopper to process linear scrap material. Encore can thus efficiently liberate the copper and aluminum from the products fed into the machines, says Thompson.

Shaker tables further process the PVC, XLPE and nylon plastic coatings by isolating them from the nonferrous copper and aluminum materials to be reclaimed. “We produce and ship millions of pounds of finished product every year,” states Thompson. “A result of manufacturing that much volume is we generate PVC, XLPE and aluminum scrap every year, which diminishes our bottom line.”

Sweed’s machines are enabling Encore to efficiently reclaim reusable raw materials at a lower cost, all while increasing quality and volume of its renewable raw materials internally, according to the company. This increase in material use efficiency and labor savings has resulted in Encore increasing its bottom line.

Throughout this process, working with Sweed has been seamless, according to Thompson. “We’re in regular contact for preventive maintenance, and I can call or text any time and get an answer right away,” he comments. “These days, it’s hard to find a company like that.”

Because Sweed’s equipment is built in the U.S., orders and parts arrive quickly. “The locality and flexibility are great,” says Thompson. “You don’t have to wait weeks for parts shipped from England or Germany.” Recently, when Encore needed a custom auger, Sweed was able to build it to Encore’s specifications and ship it to them quickly without any workflow interruption, he says.

“It’s a great company,” states Thompson, adding that Sweed provides “old school manufacturing that’s down-to-earth and easy to deal with. They’ve got a good way of doing business – just like us.”

[This article was written by Josh Francis of Eugene, Oregon-based Revolution Design Group.]

Sony Electronics agreed to third-party audits, unannounced inspections and use of e-scrap tracking devices to receive its e-Stewards Enterprise title.

Seattle-based Basel Action Network’s (BAN's) e-Stewards standard disallows exporting hazardous electronic scrap to developing countries and employs the “most rigorous criteria” to prevent data breaches from discarded hardware. Beyond Sony Electronics’ recycling efforts, Sony’s vision is to aim for a zero environmental footprint by 2050 to conserve resources and curb climate change.

“We joined the e-Stewards program not just because of its terrific recycling standard, but also because it offers a full life-cycle environmental stewardship program complete with a community of partners that supports an OEM’s (original equipment manufacturer's) broader sustainability goals and interests,” says Doug Smith, director of environment, safety and health at Sony Electronics. “For that reason, it is a natural fit for Sony.”

E-Stewards offers a package of partnership programs, including the e-Stewards Digital Equity program, which fosters reuse for community good by refurbishing computers for the needy, and a partnership with National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), Phoenix, to enhance responsible data management. Last year, e-Stewards also began offering Enterprise companies the EarthEye GPS tracking program as an adjunct program to ensure downstream due diligence.

“It is particularly rewarding to see Sony, a leading expert and manufacturer of electronic products, after many years of close observation, choose to support e-Stewards in its efforts to improve stewardship of the entire electronics industry and marketplace,” BAN Founding Executive Director Jim Puckett says. “As they are electronics industry pioneers, their embrace speaks volumes.”