The company is establishing plants in western New South Wales and southern Queensland.

According to the company’s news release, Australian tire recycler Green Distillation Technologies, which has developed technology that turns end-of-life tires (ELTs) into refinery-ready oil, carbon and steel, seeks to expand into the European market.

GDT Chief Operating Officer Trevor Bayley says the recent statement by Faziler Cinaraip at the webinar organized by the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) that only 42 percent of the 12 million tons of ELTs generated in Europe each year are recycled had heightened the company’s interest.

“In addition, there is the waning interest in crumbing tires for sporting field infill, as well as a potential ban on this use,” Bayley says, referring to allegations regarding the safety of the recycled rubber used in these applications. In light of this, Bayley says Green Distillation Technologies offers a tire recycling alternative.

“We are working hard to bring our first two Australian processing facilities in Warren in western New South Wales and Toowoomba in southern Queensland into full production and have plans for five other Australian plants in Gladstone, Wagga, Geelong, Elizabeth and Collie, western Australia.

“In addition, we are in negotiations to finalize agreements for plants in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa.”

He adds, “Each plant will have a capacity to process 19,300 tons of ELTs comprising a mix of passenger car, 4WD and truck tires.”

Bayley says a typical 22.05-pound car tire will yield 1 gallon of oil, 10.32 pounds of carbon and 4.30 pounds of steel, a 154.32-pound truck tire will provide 6.87 gallons of oil, 72.75 pounds of carbon, 30.09 pounds of steel, and a 4-ton oversize mining dump truck tire will yield 4.4.75 gallons of oil immersion field (oif) oil,1.7 tons of carbon and 0.76 tons of steel.

“There is no shortage of raw material as there are 1.5 billion ELT discarded globally each year together with an existing stockpile of at least that volume in dumps around the world,” Bayley says. “In the light of this burgeoning environmental disposal problem, our approach provides a recycling solution as we are able to turn a world environmental problem into valuable and highly saleable materials.”

For further information please call or Dennis Rutzou at 411-510-888.

CGC specializes in residential, commercial and industrial waste collection as well as C&D material disposal and recycling.

Wheelabrator Technologies, with U.S. headquarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has announced that it has acquired Londonderry, New Hampshire-based Charles George Companies Inc. (CGC).

CGC specializes in residential, commercial and industrial waste collection as well as construction and demolition (C&D) material disposal and recycling. To meet its disposal and recycling objectives, CGC operates Fitchburg, Massachusetts-based AKS Recycling Inc., a 7.5-acre transfer station and recycling facility. According to the company, it processes 5,000 tons per month out of its 30,000-square-foot material recycling facility (MRF) at the site. The company also offers temporary dumpster, roll-off and compaction equipment rental.

“I am pleased to announce that last week on July 1, Wheelabrator Technologies reached financial close on the purchase of Charles George Companies Inc., a family-owned and operated waste disposal and recycling business well-known for delivering high-quality customer service in Massachusetts and New Hampshire since its start in 1959,” Wheelabrator Technologies President and CEO Bob Boucher told Waste Today. “I would like to welcome CGC and its employees into our Wheelabrator family. CGC is a third-generation waste business led by Christopher Karras and Karen George. The company has grown substantially in recent years beyond transport and sustainable waste removal to include a variety of waste management, sorting and recycling services across New England. We appreciate the confidence the family has placed in us to run their business in the future under the guidance of Wheelabrator management. This transaction represents our entry into the collections business in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.”

Wheelabrator is a vertically integrated business with collection, transfer and disposal capacity. This includes waste-by-rail, landfill and waste-to-energy assets supported by a team of 1,700 employees.

Altogether, the company says it owns or operates roughly 40 strategically located assets in the U.S. and the U.K. These assets include its Stamford, Connecticut-based Tunnel Hill Partners and City Hill Carting & Recycling locations. Wheelabrator and Tunnel Hill Partners were acquired independently by Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets, the New York City-based division of Macquarie Asset Management, last year “with plans for future growth,” the company notes.

August presentations at Summit for Recycling will focus on “Building a Circular Economy.”

Denver-based Recycle Colorado says it will focus on the theme “Building a Circular Economy in the Rockies” at its online Summit for Recycling event, scheduled for Aug. 25-26, 2020.

“Colorado’s real estate, local and state business development incentives and current infrastructure puts us in a prime position to explore circularity and support its buildout,” says Kristin Kim Haynes, executive director of Recycle Colorado. “Having experts from OEDIT [the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade], the City of Boulder and the Arizona State University Global Institute of Sustainability take part in the conference provides a much needed ‘meeting-of-the-minds’ to plan and implement circular economies within manufacturing, organics, construction and packaging.”

Programming and presentations have been designed to help attendees “learn the importance of building circular economies and transforming the way we design, make and use materials; how Colorado is focusing on circularity; and [learn about] the City of Boulder’s 2020 Circular Boulder publication,” says the organization.

Adds Recycle Colorado, “A circular system for materials will create new jobs, enhance infrastructure and technology, as well as meet international sustainability initiatives.”

Mills in the U.S. produced 2.3 percent more steel compared with the final week of June.

A statistic gaining attention in the United States in early July was the surging number of new COVID-19 cases in several western and southern U.S. states. The new caseload has not yet checked ongoing modest gains to steel output in the U.S., however.

The Washington-based American Iron & Steel Institute has reported that 1.27 million tons of steel were made in the U.S. in the week ending July 4 of this year. That represents a 2.3 percent increase from output the previous week, ending June 27.

The mill operating capacity rate rose to 56.6 percent in early July, inching up from the 55.4 percent capacity rate in the final week of June.

Steel production figures in the U.S. remain far below their pre-COVID-19 counterparts from 2019. For the week ending July 4, total output was down 31.6 percent from the comparable week in 2019. In early July 2019, the mill capacity rate was 79.7 percent.

The onset of COVID-19 and subsequent restrictions in mid-March in the U.S. quickly changed the steel production landscape in America. Mills operated at 79.4 percent capacity rate the week ending March 21 of this year, before plunging to a rate as low as 51.1 percent for the week ending May 2.

Although home-confined Americans remain thirsty, fewer of their aluminum used beverage containers are being recycled.

Among the numerous economic ripple effects of COVID-19 have been disruptions to the partially closed recycling loop of aluminum beverage cans. While Americans continue to drink canned beer and soft drinks even while staying at home more, restrictions on recycling programs have caused fewer of those empty used beverage containers (UBCs) to reenter the aluminum supply chain.

According to an analysis by Platts, republished online by the Hellenic Shipping News, producers of aluminum can sheet in the United States have been importing aluminum from Latin America to help fill the gap created by UBCs not making their way back to secondary smelters.

The analysis notes the average aluminum can is made with 73 percent recycled content. In mid-2020, a combination of strong demand for canned beverages in the U.S. and caution in collecting and sorting by recycling companies and agencies in America has created a temporary wobble in the circular market.

In America’s largest state, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order June 22 allowing grocers and retailers to choose if they would like to redeem bottle and cans or continue not to through mid-August. That order has been in place since early March.

In states with deposit-return bottle bills, statistics point to a severe downturn in UBC collections in the late first quarter and in the second quarter of 2020. Scott Breen, the vice president of sustainability with the Washington-based Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) calculated as of early June that about 70 million cans and bottles had gone unredeemed in Michigan each week it deemed UBC collection as a nonessential activity.

The CMI estimates from 40 to 45 percent of collected UBCs come from the 10 states that have bottle bills, including California and Michigan. Breen says, “At the end of the day we need that material; manufacturers need it.”

On the demand side, meanwhile, a representative from a U.S. can production facility tells Platts demand for canned beverages is “very strong,” adding, “All I know is we’re making every can we can make.”

In the first quarter of 2020, with the epidemic just starting in the U.S., demand for canned beer rose by 6.7 percent and for canned soft drinks by 9.3 percent, according to CMI figures cited by Platts.

In the U.S., just one-quarter of canned beverages are sold in bars or restaurants, with the other three-quarters consumed at home, according to a beer producer Platts quotes. Although the dining-out venue sales have dropped dramatically, sales to the dominant home market have soared. “We are struggling to get cans,” the beer producer tells Platts.

Buyers of aluminum can sheet or the recycled-content ingots used to make it have been turning to Mexico and Brazil for replacement supply. In those markets, according to the can producer interviewed by Platts, demand for cans has dropped because they are used “almost exclusively in bars and restaurants” in two nations where restrictions and public caution have kept such venues empty.

Prices paid for UBCs by can sheet mills rose to 65 percent of the value of primary aluminum in late June, according to Platts, well above what it considers a more “typical” 58 percent figure.