Bingham Farms, Michigan-based Global Commercial Credit (GCC) says it has redesigned its website to incorporate “a new modernized look, complete mobile accessibility and an improved front-end user experience.” The credit insurance broker for the metals industry also is celebrating its 20th year in business.

As part of its website update, GCC says it has highlighted what makes it “unique from other specialist brokers in the credit insurance field,” including its more than 200 years of combined experience in trade credit insurance and finance in the metals sector. Profiles of GCC’s service team, claims and recovery team and financial analysts are available on the site.

“The very essence of our business is service and support,” says Craig Bonnell, president of GCC. “Our 20-plus year history of service to the metals industry is something we’re very proud of. A lot of companies talk about service. We live it every day. Like we say on our new site, it’s in our DNA.”

GCC says it collaborated with Wade Pressel and Steve Flake of Mercury Studio LLC, Royal Oak Michigan, to developed the new design over the course of two months.

“It was important to Mercury Studio that the new Global Commercial Credit website be a showcase of GCC’s metals industry credit risk management expertise while properly presenting the services and people that make GCC so great,” says Flake. “The new website is a bottom-up rebuild that will make a strong impression on current and potential clients and allow for users of the website to get the information they need in the most efficient way possible.”

GCC describes itself as a specialty broker for domestic and export trade credit insurance in the metals industry, representing many carriers who specialize in the specialty coverage area.

A Urraco 75 DK mobile shredder supplied by the Raleigh, North Carolina Lindner America office of Austria-based Lindner, with the instrumental help of its eastern Canada representative Recycling Equipment of Canada Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, has been on the job since early 2016 at a demolition and nearby landfill site in Ontario, Canada.

The unit has been set up to serve the decommissioning of the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) site, which was operated by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL).

According to Lindner, the 75 DK has recently been onsite at the landfill to process noncontaminated waste, shredding wood, plastics and light materials from demolition, renovation and new building work. At the 40 square-kilometer (15.4-square-mile) site with around 160 buildings, the debris includes pallets, construction timber, trees and brush, asphalt, metal containers, plastic pipes and furniture, says Lindner.

In addition to “significantly reducing the volume of the waste,” Lindner says the Urraco is preparing the wood fraction into a compactible bulk product that can be mixed with regular landfill daily cover material and spread over the working face of the landfill at the end of every working day. The preparation of the alternative daily cover (ADC) helps CNL comply with a regulation to cover the waste collected during the course of a day with a 150-millimeter (6-inch) thick layer of wood and soil mixture, thus mitigating the need to bring soil just for this purpose.

CNL operates the 75 DK with a diesel engine and track system and with a nominal shredding capacity of up to 45 tons of wood per hour. James Betts, who is section head of waste management operations at CNL, meaning he is responsible for non-radioactive waste disposal, says, “Even now, we are shredding a volume of over 10,000 cubic meters (13,000 cubic yards) every year, but this is likely to multiply quickly as we expand our work. The mobile self-driving Urraco meets our requirements down to a tee. Its shredding performance gives us the necessary reserves, its track system provides the necessary mobility and its rugged construction means a minimum of maintenance and repair work.”

The Urraco shredder is equipped with a contaminant recognition system designed to respond within fractions of a second. Together with a reversing function, it is designed to protect the tools from damage and to reduce the wear and tear of the shafts and the stress on the drive system. Also standard is the discharge belt, the height of which can be adjusted by remote control through the hydraulic system. In the CNL installation, a magnet is positioned above it to extract nails and other metal components for subsequent recycling.

“The track system reliably prevents the machine from becoming stuck when we maneuver it with the remote control over the rough terrain,” says Betts. “The diesel is very well coordinated to the hydraulic system, which means that it consumes surprisingly little fuel when shredding. In addition, the control software switches it to eco mode with a much lower rpm if no shredding is carried out for a longer period of time. This reduces consumption even further. Especially for our region, where the temperatures vary from over 30 °C in summer to below -30 degrees Celsius in winter, it was also vital that this engine should be completely immune to the influences of the weather in practical operation. Our experience so far with the performance, reliability, operating costs and maintenance friendliness of the Urraco confirms our decision to select Lindner as our supplier without reservations.”

Adds CNL Supervisor of Clearable Waste Operations Jason Ziebarth, “Our Urraco meets the expectations we had of it not only from a technical point of view, as it has also proved absolutely user-friendly. Within a very short time [employees Jonny Layman and Ian Boudens] have become experts in handling the shredder.’

Outdoor gear and outfitter company Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI), headquartered in Seattle, has received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification at its newest distribution center in Goodyear, Arizona. Platinum is the highest level in the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) green building rating system—making it the first distribution center in the U.S. to achieve both LEED Platinum certification and Net Zero Energy.

"REI worked hard to deliver a new standard for the industry that was in line with our values and commitment to sustainable operations," says Rick Bingle, REI vice president of supply chain. "To create an impact that extends far beyond the co-op, we chose to open the design of the facility and our doors to the industry, not only to make it easier for other companies to build this technology into their operations but [also] to actively encourage them to do so."

The co-op welcomes anyone within the industry or the general public to tour the distribution center in Goodyear to see the facility firsthand; interested parties can contact the co-op.

REI achieved LEED Platinum certification by implementing sustainable strategies and solutions throughout the building, including:

• recycling program -- Approximately 97 percent of all materials at the distribution center are recycled and less than 3 percent of waste is sent to landfills. The recycling program includes plastic, paper, wood and cardboard.
• renewable energy -- The 2.2-megawatt solar system produces renewable energy on-site, enough to power the entire facility annually. The system is expected to provide REI with 20 years of free energy and pay for itself in five years.
• water conservation and restoration -- The distribution center features a nonevaporative cooling system—fully powered by renewable energy—to keep employees cool in the desert heat and save millions of gallons of water every year. REI will also help restore the nearby Verde River, enhancing water flows and creating new areas for paddling and other water sports. This project has balanced the entire co-op's water footprint for two years, which USGBC rewards through its Water Restoration Certificates pilot credit.
• ecofriendly building features -- REI installed energy-efficient features throughout the building, including conveyors that shut off when no items are present, an air conditioning system powered by solar energy, LED lights with motion sensors and strategically placed skylights, drought-tolerant landscaping with an underground drip irrigation system and restrooms with no-water urinals and low-flush toilets.

REI currently has seven LEED-certified facilities, including a retail store with a LEED Gold rating for Commercial Interiors in Portland, Oregon, in 2004. The combined size of REI's LEED-certified buildings is more than 1 million square feet, and the co-op's developer is also pursuing LEED certification for the building that houses the new flagship store in Washington.

Companies involved in the shredding of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) around the world, even those who have invested heavily in WEEE shredding plants, are paying greater attention to repair, reuse and resale markets, according to presenters at the WEEE processing session at the 2016 Recycling Confex Middle East, which took place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in early December.

“Shredders are no longer the solution for every device,” declared Stephen Phelan, managing director in the Middle East for Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS), a company that operates shredding plants for WEEE materials in several nations.

Phelan said customers for SRS’ ITAD (information technology asset disposition) services have differing priorities, and many of them involve actions that must take place before a device is shredded to turn it into secondary commodities.

Data security is often the highest priority, and while this can be accomplished by shredding, SRS also performs software erasure and degaussing services for companies that wish to resell their unwanted computers, phones and other devices.

That is because selecting the highest value recovery method also is important to customers, said Phelan, and that often involves preparing a device for resale. Along with these two priorities, Phelan said customers are seeking compliance with pertinent regulations (involving data security and environmental laws) and often have corporate sustainability targets that focus on reuse and recycling.

Mohammed Sulaiman Al-Harty of Oman-based environmental services firm Be’ah said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region is beginning to move away from the traditional “make, take and dispose” mentality regarding the more than 700,000 tonnes of WEEE material it generates annually.

Be’ah has a 3,600-tonnes-per-year WEEE processing pilot facility coming online in 2017, said Al-Harthy, that will include dismantling and resale operations. He said Oman is considering an extended producer responsibility system for electronic devices.

Neil Reid of Saudi Arabia-based Holoul Electronic Recycling Treatment Co. said that nation does not currently have legislation in place to provide support to WEEE processing, but in the kingdom “this material has to go somewhere [and] we have a duty to do this.”

He said the company is striving to handle up to 17 million tonnes of the 93 million tonnes of WEEE generated in Saudi Arabia each year. “Zero waste to landfill is what we’re looking for,” he said of Holoul’s philosophy.

Reid said the company has entered an alliance with Ireland-based Wisetek to help it navigate the reuse and resale markets and it will work with Wisetek on other “life cycle management services.”

Candice Taylor of Sweden-based telecom equipment provider Ericsson says the company is one where product designers “do talk to recyclers” in an effort to make its equipment more recyclable.

“We put the closed loop into our strategy,” said Taylor, adding that Ericsson’s corporate goals include reducing its carbon footprint by 42% and achieving a 98% recycling rate on the products it takes back at the end of their life cycles.

Joris Lauwers of Belgium-based Umicore Precious Metals Refining told attendees that its smelters are an important link in the WEEE recycling chain, as they allow precious and nonferrous metals to be recovered and turned into new products.

He said there are currently only 10 such smelters serving the “hundreds of thousands of collectors and recyclers” handling WEEE materials. “These [facilities] require sophisticated technology and large capital expenditures,” he remarked.

Lauwers said one trend supporting the potential for increased future smelting capacity is the proliferation of electric and hybrid vehicles with their considerable volumes of nickel-containing batteries.

The 2016 Recycling Confex Middle East was 5-6 December at the Hyatt Regency Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.