Actions of bankrupt electronics recycling firm scrutinized in Kentucky court

An affidavit from employees at a landfill in Kentucky includes testimony that employees of the former Global Environmental Services (GES) had assured them the ground-up glass they were bringing to the landfill was not hazardous. GES, a former electronics recycling firm, filed for bankruptcy in late 2015.

According to an online news item from the News-Graphic, based in Georgetown, Kentucky,

An accounts manager of Central Kentucky Landfill has testified that GES employees had told him the firm was not generating hazardous waste or any material that would be categorized as special waste. The landfill accepted GES shipments from 2012 through 2015.

The shipments, however, included ground leaded cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor glass. The employee said he learned some of the materials were hazardous when news of the Texas-based GES’s bankruptcy began to be disseminated in the fall of 2015.

Around the time of the bankruptcy, an employee of a firm with property adjacent to a GES plant in Kentucky shot footage of questionable disposal and storage practices taking place there, according to the News-Graphic.

In addition to the bankruptcy, former GES President Kenny Gravitt has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Kentucky, the newspaper says. The former assets of the company have been purchased by Wisconsin-based Dynamic Recycling. 

Throughout 2010 and 2011, GES promoted the numerous ISO certifications it said its facilities were obtaining. In 2011, GES said its Lexington, Kentucky, plant had earned e-Stewards certification. In 2014, Gravitt told Recycling Today that GES’ ability to turn ground CRT glass into sand that could be used in golf course sand traps and other locations was helping to solve the problem of unwanted, end-of-life CRT monitors.