Newport News, Virginia-based Liebherr USA Co.’s Construction Equipment division has expanded its dealer network by adding State Machinery & Equipment Sales Inc. The Kenner, Louisiana-based authorized dealer will be a service and parts provider in the state of Louisiana for the full line of Liebherr earthmoving and material handling equipment.

“I am proud of and excited about this new opportunity with Liebherr USA Co. Construction Equipment division. State Machinery looks forward to great success in this market with such quality products,” Ed Renton, president of State Machinery, says.

Since 1989, State Machinery has served New Orleans and surrounding communities with new, used and rental heavy equipment.

"We are thrilled about our new partnership with State Machinery,” says Peter Mayer, managing director of Liebherr USA Construction Equipment. “Their exemplary customer service and extensive knowledge of Liebherr parts strengthens our confidence that they will be a tremendous support to our growing number of customers.”

Established in 1949, the Liebherr Group is a leading manufacturer of earthmoving equipment and a supplier of products and services in many other fields. Liebherr’s product range covers earthmoving and material handling machinery, mining equipment, mobile cranes, construction cranes, mixing technology, domestic appliances, maritime cranes, aerospace and transportation systems, machine tools and automation systems, as well as high-performance components for mechanical, hydraulic and electrical drive and control technology. Liebherr also operates hotels in Ireland, Austria and Germany. 

Zerocycle, Washington, announced March 28 that the company has concluded two successful initiatives with the city of Buffalo, New York, and the city of Cincinnati, respectively. Zerocycle is the creator of a proprietary Resident Engagement Platform (REP) that uses analytics and behavioral science techniques to help local governments increase recycling, reduce waste and lower disposal costs.

Zerocycle’s Resident Engagement Platform uses proprietary big data analytics to capture and integrate a multitude of existing data streams, such as weight tickets and route information, to deliver targeted messaging to households in strategic areas based on their need for improvement. The outreach is customized with each city’s branding and features full-color maps, neighborhood rankings to foster friendly competition and other recycling insights.

Zerocycle’s initiative with the city of Buffalo helped double the rate of increase in recycling tonnage across target households, while the initiative with the city of Cincinnati led to a 15.7 percent increase in recycling participation. Both initiatives focused on neighborhoods with historically low recycling rates, and the results were measured using randomized controlled trials.

Officials from the city of Buffalo have extended their engagement with Zerocycle and expanded the number of target households by 400 percent.

“The city of Buffalo is pleased to have this new tool for our residents to motivate them to increase recycling in their neighborhoods,” Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown said.

“We’re very excited about our progress coming out of 2017, as we’ve now refined our measurement and outreach platform to extremely accurate levels, which would have been impossible without the real-world implementation and evaluation in these two great cities,” Hunter Hayes, Zerocycle’s co-founder and CEO, said. “In the first three months of 2018, we’ve already quintupled our 2017 data collection, and we don’t see any signs of that slowing down.”

Last year, Zerocycle helped the city of Fremont, California, achieve a 13 percent reduction in overall trash bin weight, and the company is preparing to launch new initiatives in Columbus, Ohio; Torrance, California; and Des Moines, Iowa, respectively.

In a separate announcement, Zerocycle recently launched a new web-based tool called the Recycling Analytics Dashboard (RAD), which visually displays a city’s neighborhood-specific waste diversion metrics. In addition to keeping citizens informed and engaged, RAD helps city officials proactively identify areas that are exceeding, meeting or falling below waste diversion targets.

The University of York in the United Kingdom is the lead entity on a £5 million ($7 million) project to develop the “bioeconomy” in Yorkshire, the Humber region and the Tees Valley areas of the U.K.

The THYME project involves collaboration between the Universities of York, Hull and Teesside and is intended to build on “the existing expertise and innovation in the region” in a new.

Those involved in the three-year project say the funding will boost the region’s economy, create jobs and deliver major environmental benefits.

The THYME project is part of a larger investment package designed to drive university commercialization via Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF).

The bioeconomy uses renewable, biological resources such as plants, wastes and residues to create products that can reduce reliance on fossil resources while also diverting waste from landfill.

The THYME project has three predominant themes:

• Transform: produce high-value products from bio-based wastes and byproducts;
• Convert: repurpose industrial sites for bio-based manufacturing; and
• Grow: increase productivity by reducing waste and energy use, adding value to byproducts and developing better products using industrial biotechnology.

The project is being led by the University of York and conducted in partnership with the Biorenewables Development Centre (BDC) and BioVale.

“This project builds on our world-leading expertise in the bioeconomy here at York and the wider region,” says Professor Jon Timmis at the University of York. “The university is committed to being a key player in regional growth, and this project provides an excellent opportunity for the university to help deliver that commitment.”

BDC Director Joe Ross, adds, “There’s growing interest in shifting away from a traditional, linear, fossil-based economy that has, for example, littered the planet with plastics. We believe that switching to a circular economy based on biorenewable materials will provide major benefits for the environment, for human health and for the economy – and that [northern England] has the assets and the knowledge to lead the change.”

A recent Science and Innovation Audit (SIA) of the bioeconomy in the north of England revealed there are more than 16,000 bioeconomy-related companies in the region, with total annual sales of more than £91 billion ($128 billion), employing around 415,000 people.

The bioeconomy is estimated to be worth £220 billion ($309 billion) in all of the U.K., and the government’s industrial strategy is striving to double its size by 2030.

Houston-based Waste Management Inc. (WM) has acquired the hauling routes of Norton Environmental, Flagstaff, Arizona, a recycling and solid waste operator.

The acquisition does not include service to the city of Flagstaff residents served by municipal trash and recycling trucks.

WM has operated in Arizona for 50 years. A spokesperson for WM says the transaction will strengthen the firm’s operations in northern Arizona. Norton’s decision to sell its collection routes has been billed as a step to strengthen its operations in other areas.

“Safety is our top priority at Waste Management, and we are making sure we can service all our new and existing customers safely and efficiently,” says Adam Serrano, WM district manager for northern Arizona. “This means some people will have a new pickup day, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure residents are aware of the change to prevent any disruption to their routine.” 

WM also has closed its DuPage County (Illinois) Recycling Center in suburban Chicago. A spokesperson for the company says the facility has been idle since late December 2017, when WM’s lease for the building came to an end.

WM's Lisa Disbrow says material that was processed at the DuPage facility is being redirected to other company facilities and to some third-party plants.

The DuPage County Recycling Center had been in operation for around 25 years.