A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
For the past few weeks, we’ve been addressing some of the new problems facing American companies involved in taking the materials collected in recycling efforts. These new problems came about because of China’s now restricting what recycled materials they will now take. Since they were the largest market for both America and other countries, the whole world is seeking solutions while the recycled materials are piling up.
Thus an item in the current Resource Recycling newsletter caught our eye. It was titled: “New end use for mixed paper and plastics developed.” And the best news it’s being developed by a Texas company, located in Houston.
The article started with, “Markets for mixed paper and plastics have been hard hit by China’s import restrictions. Now, a Texas company is working to develop a new domestic one: paper-plastic building panels.”
This Houston-based company developed a process to recycle mixed paper and plastics together into panels. They then purchased a Des Moines, Iowa-based company which makes wall paneling to use the new process.
This Iowa company is already known “… to the recycling industry as an end market for post-consumer food and beverage cartons.” It appears this company doesn’t separate the thin layers of fiber and plastic in such cartons, but instead uses the entire multi-layer material into construction boards.
Earlier the Houston company worked with the refuse company, Waste Management, to operate a 1,000-tons-per-day MSW and recyclables sorting and processing facility, which creates a paper-plastics fuel to burn for energy. But now, they have developed a technology to recycle that paper-plastics mix into construction boards.
These four by eight foot boards will be used for commercial building roofs and walls. They are resistant to fire, hail, wind and moisture. As a spokesperson commented, “You don’t have to give up anything using these products and types of materials, from a performance standpoint.”
The plant in Des Moines is able to produce 10-12 million square feet of board per year. While that may sound like a lot, they mentioned “… one unnamed big-box retailer needs to replace 20 million square feet of roof each year.”
To meet the expected future needs, the company “… plans to build a factory capable of pressing 150,000 tons per year of paper and plastic into 150 million square feet of board.” They are hoping to have the facility in operation in about a year.
(To us, that sounds like a good use for a lot of scrap paper and plastic.)
Not totally forgetting about China, we find in a report, “China’s use of [their own] ferrous scrap in steelmaking and foundry applications rose by nearly 50 percent in the first four months of 2018 compared with 2017.”
(So now they aren’t importing as much scrap iron, but are using a lot more of their own. When I see all the junked vehicles sitting in fields as I am driving to MN, I’m hoping a lot more of them will be used as our steeling making comes back more and more. As you may know, scrap iron is needed in making steel.)
Till next week, do have a great one.
