Remade announces recycling training bootcamp

The Remade Institute, a 148-member public-private partnership established by the United States Department of Energy with an initial investment of $140 million, has announced a new training boot camp to accelerate the nation’s transition to a circular economy.

The live, two-day, online boot camp in advanced fibers recycling – part of the Institute’s Remade Academy – will take place from 11 a.m.to 4:30 p.m, Tuesday, June 21 and from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 22. The training, which focuses on paper recycling, encompasses six courses and leads to an awareness-level certificate.

Remade CEO Nabil Nasr says the upcoming recycling boot camp is part of Remade’s ongoing efforts to train workers across the United States in next-generation technologies. Remade training enables the U.S.’s transition to a circular economy which reduces energy consumption; decreases greenhouse gas emissions; reduces the use of raw and virgin, or primary, materials; and increases the supply and use of recycled, or secondary, materials. Additional benefits of a circular approach include an increase in manufacturing competitiveness, an increase in supply chain resiliency and a decrease in dependence on raw materials from outside the U.S.

“For U.S. manufacturing to stay competitive and have ready access to a resilient supply chain, manufacturers nationwide must accelerate their transition to a circular economy, and their workers must be trained in next-generation, circular technologies,” Nasr says.

Fibers recycling, including paper recycling, is critically important in the U.S. and around the world, Remade says. In the U.S.’ current curbside recycling system, paper and cardboard are frequently contaminated, resulting in more than 17.2 million tons, or 25 percent, or municipal solid waste paper and paperboard ending up in a landfill, according to Remade. Through the Institute’s ongoing research, Remake seeks to remove contaminants, increase recycling rates, and as a result, increase the supply of recycled papers to manufacturers in the U.S.

The boot camp’s six courses are led by Kecheng Li, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of chemical and paper engineering at Western Michigan University (WMU), and are taught by professors and experts with WMU, Resource Recycling Systems and other organizations. Courses featured in the boot camp are:

• Paper Recovery & Processing With a Materials Recovery Facility System; 
• Manufacturing of Paper From Recycling Fibers – Process, Products & Technologies; 
• Fiber Properties & Paper Physics; 
• Printing Inks & Deinking in the Paper Recycling Process; 
• Paper Recycling Pilot Plant & Industry Tour; and
• Stickies & Organic Materials Characterization & Removal in the Paper Recycling Process.

The boot camp is open to all. Innovators, researchers and leaders in industry, academia, government and the nonprofit sector who are interested in learning more about the U.S.’s transition to a circular economy, especially in the areas of paper recycling and fibers recycling, are especially encouraged to attend. A certificate of completion will be issued to participants upon successful passage of a quiz to validate course attendance.

Registration information for the awareness-level bootcamp can be found here. Cost is free for Remade members and is $1,300 for nonmembers. Additional fibers recycling courses at both the practitioner level and expert level will be available to Institute members only on-demand.

Through its Remade Academy, the Institute offers members more than 50 hours of online training content focused on systems analysis, design, materials optimization, remanufacturing and end-of-life and recycling and recovery of four energy-intensive material classes: metals, plastics/polymers, fibers and electronic waste.

In addition, for the first time, Remade is also offering select short courses and certificate courses to non-members for a fee. Besides the upcoming boot camp, select courses available to nonmembers include:

• Fundamentals of Mechanical Recycling of Plastic; 
• End-of-Life and the Circular Economy; 
• Flexible Plastic Packaging: Industry Landscape, Challenges and Opportunities; 
• Introduction to Circular Economy and Systems Analysis; 
• Mechanical Recycling Limitations and Ways to Overcome Limitations; 
• Mechanical Recycling Testing, Extruding and Recovery; 
• Plastic Flows Through a MRF; 
• Product Design Considerations for Plastic Recycling; and
• Systems Analysis Tools and First Insights from Remade Projects.