State officials say $444,435 has been awarded to groups like counties, municipalities and waste management districts to improve recycling efforts.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) has announced the recipients of the agency's Community Recycling Grant Program. IDEM awarded $444,435 to 21 applicants that have intended to create cost-effective programs that have a positive environmental impact and an increase in waste diversion.

"The Community Recycling Grants are a great way for IDEM to promote and encourage recycling at the local level," says IDEM Commissioner Bruno Pigott. "IDEM is proud to work with communities to promote recycling throughout the state."

The grants are available to counties, municipalities, solid waste management districts, schools and nonprofit organizations located in Indiana. 

The following is the list of recipients and the amounts they were awarded:

Grants are funded through IDEM’s Solid Waste Management Fund. Money comes from the state’s solid waste management fee (IC 13-20-22-1). The fee consists of a 50 cent per ton charge on solid waste for final disposal at Indiana municipal solid waste landfills and incinerators. None of the funding comes from tax dollars.

To garner DOJ approval, Kinderhook and Waste Connections are the proposed acquiring companies of divestitures in the Republic, Santek deal.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced March 31 that Republic Services Inc., Phoenix, would be required to divest waste collection and disposal assets in five states in order to proceed with its acquisition of Santek Waste Services LLC, Cleveland, Tennessee. According to the DOJ, without the divestiture, the proposed acquisition would substantially lessen competition for small-container commercial waste collection and municipal solid waste disposal services in six local markets across the southeastern United States.

The sale, which has been in the works for nearly a year and slowed by pending DOJ approval, may be moving to its conclusion, according to the News-Herald. On April 13, Santek VP of Corporate Business Development Ben Johnston told Tennessee’s Loudon County Solid Waste Disposal Commission that a May closure date was tentatively in the offing.

“The DOJ has signed off on a few documents that were filed on (March) 31,” Johnston told the commission, according to the News-Herald. “They signed off on those documents back in—it was (April 9). I found out about it (April 12), which allowed for a tentative closure date to be established for May 3. Now, all of the documents that were filed, including the divestures, etc., are all outlined on the Department of Justice website. All of that information is available to anybody who would like to go look at it. Tentatively, there is a closure date of May.”

Under an asset preservation stipulation and order filed April 9, New York City-based private-equity firm Kinderhook Industries—with its portfolio companies of Columbia, South Carolina-based Capital Waste Services and Birmingham, Alabama-based EcoSouth—would be the proposed acquirer of Santek’s Rhea County Landfill in Dayton, Tennessee; the Murray County Landfill and Transfer Station in Chatsworth, Georgia; and the Chattanooga Transfer Station in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The proposed divestiture would also include Kinderhook acquiring additional collection facilities and routes in the Southeast.

Additionally, under the proposed divestiture, Waste Connections, Ontario, would acquire certain Texas collection routes from Santek, as well as assets and property associated with the routes.

The tire maker successfully tested and applied Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process for PET to create a high-tenacity tire fiber.

French companies Carbios and Michelin say they have taken a major step toward developing sustainable tires.

Michelin successfully tested and applied Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process for end-of-life polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to create a high-tenacity tire fiber that meets its technical requirements. 

Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process uses an enzyme capable of depolymerizing the PET in various plastics or textiles (bottles, trays, polyester clothing, etc.), allowing the production of 100-percent-recycled products with the same quality as if they were produced with virgin PET. Additionally, these products would be fully recyclable, according to a news release from the companies.

They say conventional thermomechanical recycling processes for complex plastics do not achieve the high-performance PET grade required for pneumatic applications. However, the monomers resulting from Carbios’ process, which used colored and opaque postuse plastic, once repolymerized into PET, made it possible to obtain a high-tenacity fiber that meets Michelin’s tire requirements. 

The technical fiber obtained is of the same quality as the one from virgin PET and is suitable for tires because of its breakage resistance, toughness and thermal stability.

“We are very proud to be the first to have produced and tested recycled technical fibers for tires,” says Nicolas Seeboth, director of Polymer Research at Michelin. “These reinforcements were made from colored bottles and recycled using the enzymatic technology of our partner, Carbios. These high-tech reinforcements have demonstrated their ability to provide performance identical to those from the oil industry.”

Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process, therefore, enables Michelin to get one step closer to its sustainable ambitions of achieving 40 percent sustainable materials (of renewable or recycled origin) by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.

According to the companies, 1.6 billion car tires are sold worldwide (by all tire manufacturers combined) annually. The PET fibers used in these tires represent 800,000 metric tons of PET per year.

When applied to Michelin – this represents nearly 3 billion plastic bottles per year that could be recycled into technical fibers for use in the company’s tires.

“In 2019, Carbios announced it had produced the first PET bottles with 100 percent purified terephthalic acid made from the enzymatic recycling of postconsumer PET waste,” says Alain Marty, Carbios chief scientific officer. “Today, with Michelin, we are demonstrating the full extent of our process by obtaining from this same plastic waste recycled PET that is suitable for highly technical fibers, such as those used in Michelin’s tires.”

The companies say they expect the transaction to close in June.

The European Commission has issued merger control clearance for the planned joint venture between Aurubis AG, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and TSR Recycling GmbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Lunen, Germany. In November of last year , the two companies announced they would form a joint venture to unite the Aurubis subsidiary Cablo Metall-Recycling und Handel GmbH in Fehrbellin, Germany, with TSR’s cable recycling operation in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, to recover copper granules and plastics.

Cablo GmbH, the new joint venture, is 60 percent owned by TSR and 40 percent owned by Aurubis. All the employees of Aurubis subsidiary Cablo in Fehrbellin and the employees at TSR’s cable preprocessing site in Gelsenkirchen will be part of the new joint venture.

Cablo has specialized in recycling copper and aluminum cable since 1949 and produces a wide variety of metal granules. The company also fabricates plastic products from cable insulation. The TSR branch in Gelsenkirchen operates two cable granulators and processes various types of cable, recovering different qualities of copper granules.

Bernd Fleschenberg, chief operating officer of TSR, says, “By bundling the cable recycling expertise of Aurubis and TSR, we’re fully focusing on preprocessing cable in this joint venture, particularly copper cable with a broad range of qualities. We are hoping for an even stronger boost in the quality of preprocessing because copper and plastic recycling makes a significant contribution to protecting resources and the climate.”

He says the joint venture is positioned “to close material cycles along the entire value chain even more effectively in this subsegment,” adding, “This enables us to make a crucial contribution to enhancing the circular economy – and serves as a role model for other material flows as well.”

Roland Harings, CEO of Aurubis AG, says, “A world that needs more raw materials requires more capacities, as well as technologies to recycle these raw materials from products at the end of their respective lifespans. With Cablo GmbH, we will increase the volume of input materials on the one hand and create new solutions for the accumulated plastic materials on the other.”

He adds, “Ultimately, the purpose of Cablo GmbH is to strengthen the circular economy with the know-how of both companies and to contribute to the European Green Deal.”

The closing of the transaction is planned for early June of this year.

Aurubis Senior Communications Manager Malte Blombach told Recycling Today in mid-March that consolidating operations can present cost-saving opportunities, commenting, “The primary objective of the JV is to use the existing capacities of the partners and achieve synergies.”

She also said that Cablo was in the process of expanding its wire processing capacity. “At the TSR site in Gelsenkirchen, a second production line is currently under construction and will extend already existing capacities,” she noted in mid-March.

Retail consultancy’s survey shows three-quarters of respondents would support retailers that repair and refurbish returned electronics.

A survey carried out on behalf of retail consultancy goTRG indicates American household consumers are in favor of the repair and refurbishment of electronic items, especially as an outcome for merchandise they return.

Miami-based goTRG says it works with 6 of the top 10 retailers (including Walmart) “to help them manage returned or distressed goods for resale to recoup lost revenue and mitigate environmental waste.”

The survey of 1,000 respondents, conducted this March, was designed to identify consumers’ thoughts toward electronics recycling and “explores the recycling habits of Americans and their general sentiment on buying recycled goods,” according to a goTRG public relations representative.

Among the findings of the survey were that about one-third of respondents said they didn’t know how or where to go “to properly recycle” obsolete electronic items. The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents indicated they would travel up to 10 miles to properly recycle their electronics.

Questions about repair and refurbishment also were asked, particularly in regard to returned purchases. The goTRG survey found nearly 75 percent of respondents said they would be more loyal to a retailer if they knew it had partners to repair and refurbish returned electronics so those items could be resold rather than thrown out.

When asked about buying a refurbished product, just shy of 70 percent of respondents said it was because they perceive they often could find what they wanted for a lower price. That compares with 35 percent of respondents who said it was because such purchases were better for the environment and just 23 percent who said such products were just as good as new products.