The National Recycling Coalition, a non-profit organization focused on promoting and enhancing recycling in the United States, has named the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) as the Outstanding Recycling Organization for 2020.

Nominated by GT Environmental, Stow, Ohio, the award recognizes SWACO for outstanding growth of programs and impacts pertaining to food waste diversion in central Ohio.

“The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) has led the successful implementation of the Central Ohio Food Waste Initiative (COFWI) to prevent, rescue, and recycle food waste in the region,” said Michael Greenberg, president of GT Environmental. “Although this program is developed specifically for Franklin County, Ohio, it can be used as a model for other metropolitan communities with the same issues.”

NRC’s Awards Committee Chair Lisa Skumatz noted that, “The winners embodied best practices, especially during this unique year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges that many organizations have been facing.”

The Franklin County Sanitary Landfill, owned and operated by SWACO, receives nearly a million pounds of food waste every single day. That material represents 15 percent of Franklin County’s waste stream and is equivalent to wasting 41 billion gallons of water and costs central Ohio an estimated $400 million a year.

“When food is wasted, all of the resources that went into producing it are lost,” said Ty Marsh, SWACO’s executive director. “Central Ohioans are leading the way by recognizing the important benefits of preventing, rescuing and composting our food waste and have come together to leverage those opportunities for the betterment of our economy, our environment and our community.”

Director Marsh continued, “We appreciate this special recognition from our partners at GT Environmental and the National Recycling Coalition to lift up the important work being done in the Columbus Region.”

SWACO has built a collaborative of more than 150 partner organizations working together through the Central Ohio Food Waste Initiative to create opportunities to help central Ohio residents, schools, businesses and communities reduce their reliance on landfills, protect natural resources, save money and help feed those in need.  

These efforts are guided by the Central Ohio Food Waste Action Plan, released by the Initiative in 2019, and which lays out 20 specific initiatives for preventing food waste, rescuing and redistributing edible food, and recycling food through composting and other technologies.

Working together, the Initiative and SWACO are advancing a goal to cut food waste in half by 2030 with an objective to reach 75 percent diversion of all materials away from the Franklin County Landfill by 2032.

For nearly 50 years, Canada-based Ecowaste Industries Ltd. has been servicing its community by providing diversion and recycling solutions for construction and demolition (C&D) waste.

In an effort to more closely align the company’s services with its mission to recycle, repurpose and sustain the products it manages, Ecowaste invested in a multi-million-dollar wood processing system in 2019 to better recycle waste wood streams into a high-quality biomass product that can be used for alternative fuels.

“In the past, we knew that we would be interested in getting into the wood business, and at the time, we had an opportunity to buy a [company] that would give us a pretty good reach into the wood recycling industry,” says Christian Dietrich, general manager for Ecowaste’s waste management division.

At the end of 2018, Ecowaste acquired the operating assets and facilities of Urban Wood Recycling and Smithers Enterprises, both based in Vancouver. Since the start of 2019, Ecowaste has been accepting former Urban and Smithers customers at its Ecowaste Landfill in Richmond, British Columbia.

To facilitate the wood processing needs of Ecowaste’s broadened customer network, the company began collaborating with Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, Norwalk, Connecticut, to purchase new equipment.

“We obviously needed a good long-term system to be able to process the wood through, so we went to Van Dyk and said, ‘Hey, can you help us find some equipment to start the process and make relationships with the biomass buyers and users,’” says Dietrich.

The system

Following a proposal by a Van Dyk consultant based in Holland, Ecowaste ultimately decided to purchase a complete wood processing line by HAAS Recycling Systems, Dreisbach, Germany.

“We took a trip to look at a couple of HAAS’ sites in Germany and Holland, and then completed the final design on all the components that we felt were needed,” says Dietrich. “We then went back and did another inspection of the equipment before it shipped last summer.” The parts for the equipment were delivered in August 2019 and the system has been fully operational since October 2019.

Using a highly automated system, the wood processing line is capable of processing roughly 100,000 tons of material per year.

“The system is designed to work long hours with minimum maintenance and high availability,” says Sascha Kloft, managing director for HAAS.

According to Ecowaste, the wood processing system first starts with the shredding of inbound, clean wood, which is done by a HAAS Tryon 2000-E 2.0 shredder. The material then heads to an overbelt magnet that separates the ferrous metals before it is fed into a HAAS Arthos 1600-E hammermill. During this step, the wood fraction is further reduced in size, liberating smaller metal pieces through two or more ferrous magnets and a nonferrous magnet.

“The versatile Tyron pre-shredder and the Arthos hammermill with its ‘ballistic chute’ protection system allow the system to process all types of waste and biomass, even if bigger metal parts or stones are within the infeed product,” says Kloft. “This gives the advantage of allowing many different waste streams to be processed with one line.”

Next, a downstream neodym overband magnet separates the exposed ferrous parts, followed by an eddy current separator that sorts out nonferrous metals. The HPS 125 flat screen separates the material into four fraction sizes:

• Fraction 1 is approximately 0-10 mm
• Fraction 2 is approximately 10-25 mm
• Fraction 3 is approximately 25-80 mm
• Fraction 4 is more than 80 mm

Additional screening and sorting processes ensure the correct particle size for the end consumer, and all light plastics are removed by using an air separator.

“We’ve been running for 10 months now, and the system is pretty slick,” says Dietrich.

Dietrich also says that any fears he initially had with buying equipment outside of North America have been mitigated by Van Dyk’s handling of maintenance issues.

“Van Dyk has done a good job supplying or storing a lot of spare parts in Connecticut for this line, so, I can get something within a day or two if I really need to,” he says.

Producing biomass

Ecowaste’s clean wood output is sold as biomass fuel to customers located in Canada’s lower mainland near Vancouver, with one customer in the British Columbia interior.

Included in the company’s biomass customer base is a paper producer and recycler in New Westminster, Canada. According to Dietrich, the company burns the biomass to power their dryers.

“In paper manufacturing, drying the paper can be quite expensive if they don’t use biomass,” he says.

In addition to Ecowaste’s biomass ventures, the company plans to pursue the building of a C&D materials recovery facility (MRF) in the coming years.

“Historically, we’ve recycled roughly 20 percent of what we handle—mostly concrete, a bit of wood and some green waste, materials like that,” Dietrich says. “We made the decision a few years ago to build a large C&D MRF; so, instead of taking 80 percent and burying it, [what] we plan to do is basically flip our recycling rate.”

Ecowaste is currently in the permitting process for the construction of the C&D MRF, which would process approximately 250,000 tons of mixed material yearly. The wood processing line Ecowaste recently purchased from HAAS marks the beginnings of this part of the business.

Dietrich says, “The intention behind the [wood processing] system we bought last year was for us to get into the biomass business before we built the big MRF. So, this is kind of us dipping our toes into the business of biomass sales.”

Once this part of the business is fully operational, Dietrich says they will be able to efficiently pull clean wood out of their incoming stream, along with plastics and paper, to be further recycled or used as alternative fuels.

“There’s a tremendous amount of wood in the mixed C&D waste steam. Somewhere between 45-60 percent of the material in the C&D stream is wood,” he says. “So, if it comes into our site and it’s mixed with all other types of construction materials, like plastic, insulation, carpets and roofing materials, we can’t really do much with it today, but the big MRF will be able to separate it all into different streams resulting in 70-80 percent landfill diversion. We plan to keep the HAAS line separate in the future so customers who take the time to source separate their wood will receive a lower disposal fee than if it was mixed with other C&D materials.”

Dietrich says Ecowaste is hoping to finalize the design of the C&D MRF by next summer, with the facility expected to be fully operational by the end of 2022.

This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. issue of Construction & Demolition Recycling magazine. The author is the assistant editor for Construction & Demolition Recycling magazine and can be reached at hrischar@gie.net.

Pitkin County, Colorado, announced Oct. 20 it is launching a new program to encourage the reuse and recycling of construction and demolition (C&D) waste materials within the county. The program will take effect on Oct. 26.

Earlier this year, the Board of County Commissioners signed into law Ordinance No. 015-2020, which creates a framework for the county’s new C&D debris recovery program. Through a collaboration between the Pitkin County Solid Waste Center (PCSWC) and the Pitkin County Community Development Department, C&D waste management requirements are now tied to the county’s building and demolition permit process. In addition, the PCSWC implemented a new pricing structure in March for disposal of C&D materials to incentivize recycling.

“Keeping bulky and energy-intensive building materials out of our landfill is crucial to extending landfill life, improving resource conservation and creating a supply of low-cost recycled products in our community” Michael Port, C&D diversion specialist for Pitkin County, says.

To obtain a Pitkin County building or demolition permit under the new regulations, the project owner will now pay a deposit based on the total estimated waste that will be produced by the project. The deposit is fully refunded if a project owner diverts at least 25 percent of their construction debris from the landfill and avoids trashing recyclable materials like concrete, scrap metal and others. In addition, Pitkin County has partnered with Green Halo Systems, a San Jose, California-based software company, to make their construction waste tracking platform available for free to contractors.

“With this innovative program, Pitkin County will be able to improve its C&D recycling rate by providing the industry with resources and support, and ultimately, by expanding our services at the solid waste center,” Port says.   

PCSWC staff conducted outreach activities throughout 2020 to educate citizens and area businesses about the program, including through job site visits, webinars and a marketing campaign on local radio and digital news outlets.

The Recycling Education and Research Foundation (RERF), a not-for-profit organization associated with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries(ISRI), announced on Oct. 20 that it has awarded 75 students with scholarships between $500 and $3,400 to be applied to their respective college educations. In all, RERF awarded over $122,000 to college-bound students across the United States and Canada for the 2020-21 academic year.

Funded by ISRI national chapters with scholarship programs, scholarships are awarded to dependents of employees of active ISRI member companies located within a chapter region. There are 14 active participating ISRI chapters with scholarship programs. Each chapter supports their scholarship program through fundraisers, donations and other initiatives throughout the year.

A full list of scholarship recipients are available on ISRI’s website.