3TEK Global, Grand Prairie, Texas, has introduced a new shredding option for small yards that want to move from collecting to shredding scrap metal. The Next 6280 is designed for the customer processing 1,500 to 3,000 tons per month, according to the company, which says it is a true hammer mill designed from the ground. 3TEK Global says the unit will attain a density of 70 pounds per cubic foot, helping operators get top price.

The unit is powered by a Cat 1,125-horsepower diesel engine and mounted on Cat 345 tracks, which facilitates permitting, according to 3TEK Global. The company claims the shredder’s operating costs are less than $30 per ton.

“The Next 6280 is tough workhorse, not a show pony,” says Bill Padula, vice president of sales and marketing, 3TEK Global. “While this machine is designed for the smaller yards, it’s built true to its megashredder ‘pedigree.’”

3TEK Global is a partnership among Blanchard Machinery, West Columbia, South Carolina; Granutech Saturn Systems, Grand Prairie; and Riverside Engineering, San Antonio.

3TEK says that as with its other mills and downstream sorting systems, the Next 6280 is designed for ease of serviceability, with many parts found off the shelf and proprietary parts stocked by the company.

More information is available by calling 888-755-3383 or visiting www.3TEK.com.

Above, from left: moderator Randy Goodman of Greenland (America) Inc. and panelists
Tim Strelitz of California Metal-X, Ed Meir of INTL FCStone and Joe Pickard of ISRI.

The trade turmoil that has rocked the recycling world also has led to a question of opportunity: Is the time right for the return of a large-scale secondary copper refinery in the United States? The question was among several discussed at the Copper Spotlight session at the ISRI2018 convention, held in Las Vegas in mid-April and hosted by the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).

Panelist Tim Strelitz, president of California Metal-X, said his family built a red metals ingot production plant in Los Angeles in 1979 “in a business that was about to collapse in a state that was about to go stupid.” Strelitz tied the collapse of secondary copper refining in the U.S. in part to a national trade policy approved by a Congress “that was paid off by large companies in our country to move manufacturing offshore [to] give American consumers a couple of bucks off a T-shirt.”

When it comes to a new secondary copper refinery in the U.S., ISRI Director of Commodities Joe Pickard remarked that “costs and regulatory burdens are quite high” in the U.S., but because those regulations are in place and “you’ve got law and order” in the U.S., investors may be attracted to the notion.

Ed Meir, an analyst with INTL FCStone, also noted that “regulatory oversight had been lagging” in China, but the nation’s government appears to be closing that gap. During the past 20 years, however, “Our technology is old here, and China has an edge.”

Strelitz said the way to close that technology gap is with one or more investments in new refineries. “I think a secondary copper smelter is absolutely vital to the good and welfare of the U.S.,” he remarked. He commented that Spain, Belgium and Germany have such refineries or smelters, “and their regulations are just as tough.”

Added Strelitz, “There is no reason why it can’t be done, if somebody wants to make good money.” He also commented that the last large secondary refinery in the U.S., the Chemetco facility in Illinois that closed in 2001, could still be operating if not for questionable management decisions that doomed it to become a Superfund site.

The panel also discussed the potential future growth of wire chopping in the U.S., with Strelitz contending buyers in China had long been “overpaying” for wire and cable scrap. Meir replied, “That’s the market; that’s what they’re paying.”

Strelitz expressed reservations that U.S. companies may invest in new chopping capacity, “but then two years later, China decides to [get back into the market] and pay 70 cents above [terminal pricing] for wire. The area we need to concentrate on is fair trade. That means not overpaying.”

In the current domestic copper scrap environment, Pickard pointed to the scarcity of good workers and transportation shortcomings as concerns in the sector. “Finding trucks and rail cars in some semblance of good time” is a widespread complaint among ISRI members, he commented.

Moderator Randy Goodman of Atlanta-based Greenland (America) Inc. said on the ocean shipping front, delays caused by inspections at Chinese ports are “tremendous,” leading to “weeks and weeks of backlog.” He remarked that the scrutiny was occurring at all ports, whereas “it used to be the wild, wild west the farther you got from Beijing.”

ISRI2018 was April 14-19 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

Contamination exacerbates an already-difficult market and using technology to identify what is coming into material recovery facilities (MRFs) helps operators to create a more usable product on a cost-effective basis, said speakers in the Rise of the Robots: The Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Waste Industry session at WasteExpo 2018, held April 23-26 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Speakers pointed to various reasons to use robots and AI in MRFs, including:

• heavy lifting;
• no deviation due to fatigue;
• repetitive;
• continuously high levels of concentration;
• purity rates and consistent and accurate identification of products;
• pre-emptively tracking and managing work;
• maximal operating time;
• evolutive identification of products and more meaningful data;
• reproductivity of results;
• reduce labor and training; and
• lower operating costs.

“It’s important we realize the importance of artificial intelligence in recycling,” said speaker Charles Yhap, founder and CEO of CleanRobotics, Pittsburgh.

CleanRobotics’ flagship product, the TrashBot, uses advanced robotics and AI to sort recyclables from waste at the point of disposal, increasing the recycling yield and improving its quality through reduced contamination, according to the company.

For speaker Matanya Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of AMP Robotics, Denver, he said when he began talking to MRFs about the company’s robotic system in 2014, he expected skepticism.  

“People immediately grasped the potential of this technology,” Horowitz said.

AMP’s two-part system is a robot and a vision system, which is installed over a conveyor belt and is capable of understanding and learning all materials that pass through a MRF. Once material is recognized by the vision system, the robot uses suction cups at the end of a gripper to grab on to the item before releasing it into a bunker.

The challenge, he said, has been identifying the vast variety of materials in the recycling stream.

The inbound stream changes all the time, said speaker Nathanaël Lortie, co-founder and president of Quebec-based Eagle Vizion. He pointed to the similarities between manufacturing facilities and MRFs, saying “The recycling industry isn’t any different; it’s just a little behind.”

Horowitz questioned why robots are not used in MRFs yet when the technology has been around since the 1990s. “The physical challenges have held back investments in this technology,” Horowitz said.

Horowitz and other speakers said the goal is to bring the technology and control seen in manufacturing facilities to MRFs. Robots have a compact footprint; they can be installed with little or no retrofit to the overall system. They also can work alongside human sorters.

Beyond changing inbound streams, another challenge MRFs face is the current market conditions for commodities, from recovered plastics to secondary fibers, including mixed paper.

Speaker Rich Reardon, managing director of Max-AI for Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon, said, “We’re in the toughest market conditions we could possibly be in at any given time.”

He described the work it took to build the neural network—the library of memory recognition the robotics systems learn. “You can’t go to your local Walmart and buy a neural network,” Reardon said.

BHS has since sold more than 50 units, with seven installations completed. When asked by an audience member the average economics for a Max-AI AQC (Autonomous Quality Control) product line, Reardon said a 10 ton per hour (tph) system would average about $200,000 for the robot itself, with $5,000 in parts annually.

Still, “It’s just the beginning for robots,” Horowitz said. Current iterations of picking robots will change.

He described how the vision system learns as it goes. With cloud connectivity, equipment across the MRF can “talk” to one another.

“It can tell your news screen ‘I’m getting too much plastic,’” Lortie said of the robotic system, “and it can adjust the screen.”

“Adjust and adapt,” he added, “So the facility as a whole can be more intelligent.”

Reardon and Horowitz said their robots have a 95 percent accuracy rate and gripping capabilities. CleanRobotics’ Yahp said Trashbot is 85 percent accurate, which is still significantly more than the public’s 30 percent accuracy rate.

(Read more about how robotics and AI can help MRFs to create cleaner streams of recyclables in the August 2017 feature, "Taking (quality) control.")

WasteExpo 2018 is April 23-26 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Waste haulers working in big cities have to contend with larger populations, increased traffic and busier routes. These factors, in addition to normal on-the-job hazards such as driver fatigue and equipment failure, can put both waste collectors’ and pedestrians’ safety at an increased risk.

With these issues in mind, panelists at WasteExpo 2018 talked about how haulers can work safer during the Best Practices for City Collection session.

Julia Kite, director of strategic initiatives at the New York State Department of Transportation, said that New York City’s Vision Zero program has been instrumental in helping cut down on waste-related driving injuries and fatalities.

Vision Zero, which was initially implemented in Sweden, was adopted in New York City under Mayor Bill de Blasio four years ago. According to Kite, the program has been able to be successful by changing the way people relate to collection accidents.

“What Vision Zero means is that we change the way that we think about crashes on our city streets,” Kite said. “Vision Zero first states that deaths and serious injuries on the road are preventable, and that the number of deaths that are acceptable is zero. I know that can be a lot to wrap your head around, how do you get to zero people dying in your city? But when you think about it, if we understand the reasons crashes happen and find factors we can prevent, it becomes more feasible.”

Vision Zero is a multidisciplinary policy that has focused on improving safety through several shifts in policy, including: expanded enforcement against dangerous moving violations like speeding and failure to yield to pedestrians, new street designs to facilitate better safety, public outreach and communication campaigns to better educate citizens, and harsher legislative penalties for dangerous drivers.

Since the Vision Zero initiative was adopted, Kite said that accidents and fatalities have sharply fallen in the city.

“In the four years that Vision Zero has been the official policy in New York City, we’ve made phenomenal progress,” Kite said. “While the rest of the country has seen an increase in road deaths, particularly in pedestrian deaths, New York City has found a 28 percent decline in all fatalities and a 45 percent decline in pedestrian fatalities. So, what we’re doing is working, and more importantly, we know other cities can do this, too.”

Liam Tanelli, chief financial officer at Newark, New Jersey-based Voyager Trucking Corp., said that part of improving collection safety involves dealing with the systemic employee shortage issue. He noted that as of 2017, the waste industry was down 50,000 drivers.

“I think the last two years, the national driver shortage has been getting louder and louder, and I think everyone in the industry has felt the pain of that. I think this has a direct correlation between safety and safety procedures,” Tanelli said.

The reality of this shortage is that waste companies are more liable to hire drivers with a spotty driving record to keep up with demand. To help mitigate this issue, Tanelli said that Voyager has placed a renewed emphasis on driver training. His company has also reinvested in equipment such as disc brakes, tire monitoring systems and reverse flood lights to help cut down on preventable accidents.  

John Sliwicki, vice president of risk management at Morton Grove, Illinois-based Lakeshore Recycling Systems, said to change the narrative on safety in the waste collection industry, comprehensive coordination is going to need to happen between the industry, government associations and the public at large.

“I think everyone here gets it, we can put in [onboard cameras], we can do data analysis, we can do regression modeling, but collaborations and industry outreach is really key to getting the issue of safety, crashes and fatalities addressed,” Sliwicki said.

WasteExpo 2018 was April 23-26 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.