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| Eric Wang, Director of China Operations for MBA Polymers Inc., Richmond, Calif. |
Eric Wang, Director of China Operations for MBA Polymers Inc., Richmond, Calif., had expected to address the World Recycling Forum, held in Hong Kong in mid-November, about how manufacturers were using the company’s recycled plastics to make their companies “greener.”
Instead, Wang offered attendees a lengthy explanation of why some 5,500 sea containers filled with scrap materials, including metals and plastics, were “caught in ports” in Hong Kong and southern China, creating turmoil for shippers and recipients.
According to Wang, a new head customs officer sent from Beijing to South China has insisted that all China and Hong Kong-based companies that receive imported scrap materials re-register with the government.
While that process is occurring the customs agency has been conducting inspections of each container, said Wang. This process started in early August, and thus far “about 40 percent [of the receiving companies in China or Hong Kong] are not yet approved to re-register,” said Wang.
The goal of the procedure, said Wang, is to crack down on companies that have become known as “treaters.” These companies, often operating on back roads in rural areas, accept shipments that are closer to mixed waste than clean recyclables and then pay unskilled laborers to sort for recyclable plastics, metals and paper.
“The purpose [of the customs crackdown] is to upgrade the recycling industry and squeeze out these treaters,” said Wang. In theory, it should be difficult for such treaters to make it through this process with both a China EPA business license and permission from China’s AQSIQ (Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine) to receive containers.
Despite the freight-related setback, MBA Polymers in China has been thriving, said Wang, by offering a “sustainable business model that is lower cost and uses less energy than a petro-chemical company” to produce desirable plastic materials that can be used by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). “We close the loop for OEM companies and make the world green,” he stated.
Speaking at the same session, Patrick Lin of Wistron Corp. offered an overview of why and how that Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer has entered the recycling sector. “My job is to build a recycling business for Wistron,” said Lin.
Wistron, a computer designer and manufacturer serving several brand owners, which was spun off from Acer in 2001, employs 60,000 people at 25 sites in several countries.
Lin’s first major project has been to build a plastics recycling facility and campus in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, China, which is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2012. Wistron also is beginning to recycle obsolete circuit boards at a plant near Dallas, Texas.
Presenter Peter Hessler of German equipment maker UNTHA Recycling GmbH, at the same session, detailed small appliance recycling systems his company has set up in Europe and China to capture recyclable metals and plastic. Hessler said this obsolete product stream can include “small kitchen appliances, hand tools, low-grade IT material—you can find everything.”
The UNTHA system often starts with manual sorters who pick out batteries and toner cartridges as well as wire and cable, which Hessler called “the first value fraction.”
A primary shredder leads to more sorting stations, where workers can pick out motors, transformers and circuit boards as well as hazardous items such as capacitors and remaining batteries.
Automation then takes over in the form of magnetic equipment, another shredder and density sorting equipment that concentrates on the valuable ferrous and nonferrous metals found in this stream, said Hessler.
The 2011 World Recycling Forum, hosted by ICM AG, was Nov. 15-18 in Hong Kong.