GLR Recycling Solutions, Roseville, Mich., invited its customers and elected officials from throughout southeastern Michigan to help it cut the ribbon on its new $12 million single-stream materials recovery facility (MRF).
At a mid-January open house event, GLR co-owner Sandy Rosen reflected on the journey the company has taken in the course of 80 years and three generations of leadership. “When my grandfather Henry Rosen started collecting rags and scrap paper in 1927, he didn’t know that someday there would also be aluminum cans and plastic bottles that could be recycled,” Sandy Rosen remarked at the open house.
Although recovered fiber has remained a mainstay for GLR (formerly Great Lakes Recycling) those other post-consumer commodities will also be harvested at the company’s new MRF, located in southern Wayne County in metropolitan Detroit. It is the company’s second MRF in the Detroit area, with the other in Roseville in the northern suburbs.
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(from left to right: John Hawthorn, Ilene Bischer, Sandy Rosen and Jim DiMarco of Great Lakes Recycling celebrating at the grand opening January 13th 2009. |
“Having been located in Michigan for more than 80 years, we felt it was important to invest in Michigan,” says Rosen. The company will seek material to bring to the MRF from throughout Michigan and beyond. “The recycling facility will process recyclables from the entire region, including from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Canada,” Rosen says.
The new MRF, located in New Boston, is a 50,000-square-foot facility outfitted with a Bollegraaf-Lubo sorting and baling system provided by Van Dyk Baler Corp., Stamford, Conn. The system includes a variety of screens, conveyors and sorting stations as well as a TiTech optical sorter to help sort plastic containers and a Bollegraaf HBC 120 baler designed to bale all materials (fiber, plastics and light metals) produced at the plant.
Rosen thanked his employees, his bank and the equipment providers for helping GLR get through a construction process that took longer than anticipated. “We ordered all this equipment without identifying a site, and had anticipated that the Detroit area would offer a suitable vacant property; boy, were we in for a surprise,” he commented.
The company then selected a greenfield site that proved to offer barriers to its development before selecting the site in New Boston, which is located less than a mile from an interstate highway exit.
The New Boston facility also includes a truck scale, a large tipping floor and a multi-media room and viewing areas designed to accommodate school classes and other tour groups.
According to Rosen, adding the viewing areas and walkways increased the cost of the facility, but he says GLR believes the space will help communicate the recycling message “so that schools and other groups can help educate future leaders on the importance of recycling to our environment.”
Tours of the plant will be available to public groups starting in the spring of 2009. More information on the tour process will be posted soon to www.go-glr.com
GLR Recycling Solutions has operations in Roseville, New Boston and Flint, Mich., and in North Tonawanda, N.Y. The company also recently announced a partnership with Canada’s GEEP (Global Electric Electronic Processing) to co-manage an electronics recycling facility to be known as GEEP Michigan.