The belt scale is a simple field-assembled design that can be installed without using large equipment. 

Fairbanks Scales Inc., an Overland Park, Kansas-based manufacturer of weighing equipment, has launched the FB9000 Series conveyor belt scales. The company says the scales are a reliable and easy-to-install weighing solution for idler-style in-motion conveying applications.  

According to a news release from Fairbanks, the belt scale is a field-assembled design that can be installed without large equipment. It is available in common configurations with instrumentation and displays to service most scale needs. Fairbanks says the belt scales are user and service-friendly with convenient options like the self-storing test weight assembly.  

The company says the FB9000’s self-aligning weighbridge accurately measures the force of material, without the use of levers, linage or other mechanical apparatus known to produce nonlinearity. The scales have various applications: 

The FB9000 Series scales offer high-resolution weighing of all products, even low flow rate applications, in stationary plants where accurate, repeatable tracking of product totals and ratios are crucial to plant management.

It can be used in portable applications where its modular design allows for installation on virtually any style conveyor, including low profile and spine conveyors.

The FB9000 Series’ automatic angle compensation feature enables repeatable, accurate weighing on catenary style idlers, such as those used on track-mounted portable crushers and asphalt milling machines.   

Rail, barge, truck and ship loadout requires high accuracy in rugged environments. The FB9000 Series is accurate at flow rates up to 10,000 tons per hour, and it has built-in loadout controls for automated cutoff. 

The technology had an average detection rate of 99 percent.

Digimarc Corp., Beaverton, Oregon, and AIM – European Brands Association, Brussels, have announced that the Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0 has completed a semi-industrial trial demonstrating an average detection rate of 99 percent, while ejection and purity rates were 95 percent, on average. The organizations say the results demonstrate that Digimarc’s technology performs well across all tested categories of plastic packaging in conditions representing routine industrial operations, even at higher belt speed and when the packaging has severe soiling and crushing.

Digital watermarks are imperceptible codes that are the size of a postage stamp and carry a wide range of attributes about the consumer goods packaging that they are placed on. The aim is that once the packaging has entered a material recovery facility, the digital watermark can be detected and decoded using a high-resolution camera on the sorting line, which, based on the transferred attributes that could include whether the packaging was used for food or not, sorts the packaging in corresponding streams.

“These results emphatically prove that Digimarc digital watermarks can transform recycling,” says Digimarc CEO Riley McCormack. “What’s more, Digimarc Recycle, powered by Digimarc digital watermarks, provides the industry additional business value in addition to this core, critical enablement of a circular economy. With the exceptional performance of Digimarc digital watermarks now validated, we are excited to partner with sustainability leaders to drive meaningful impact to the planet, as well as their businesses.”

The results show that the digital watermark technology can achieve more granular sorting of end-of-life packaging at scale, such as developing separate food and other new postconsumer streams that do not exist, such as for cosmetic or detergent applications, effectively overcoming limitations of near-infrared sorting technologies. The organizations say the technology can help to drive a true circular economy for packaging.

Developed by the machine vendor Pellenc ST and the digital watermarks technology supplier Digimarc, the detection unit is now ready for industrial-scale pilots, which are planned to start later this year, according to a news release issued by AIM. Details on industrial partners and packaging scope will be released soon.

“We have achieved our objective of proving digital watermarks can increase intelligent sorting of packaging waste at scale, enabling new recycling streams that currently do not exist. This would be a fantastic leap forward in achieving the EU recycling goals,” says Michelle Gibbons, director general of AIM. “Innovation and digital are the core drivers towards the Green Transition, and this has been brought to life through HolyGrail 2.0. The engagement across the value chain by dedicated experts and teams to get to this point has been remarkable; now, market participants can decide to be part of industrial-scale pilots, to test this at an even bigger scale in Europe.”

Jacob Duer, president and CEO of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which provided funding for the project, says, “The HolyGrail project is an excellent example of how engaged and committed businesses coming together around a very clear goal can accelerate the development of new solutions. As we move into the next stage of in-market demonstrations, we strongly encourage more businesses and partners to join us in scaling up testing and adoption.”

The semi-industrial tests of the Pellenc ST/Digimarc prototype started in October 2021 at the Amager Resource Center in Copenhagen. The purpose was to evaluate the technology by replicating real-world industrial conditions. Comprehensive sets of tests were performed on approximately 125,000 pieces of packaging from 260 stock-keeping units, or SKUs, at a belt speed of 3 meters per second, or nearly 10 feet, with soiling/crushing and throughput representing routine industrial operations. Additional tests also were performed at a higher belt speed of 4.5 meters per second, or nearly 15 feet per seconds, with severe soiling and crushing, without loss of performance. 

Keith Pugh has been active with APWA for more than 20 years. 

The American Public Works Association (APWA), Kansas City, Missouri, has selected member Keith Pugh as its next president-elect. Previous president-elect Dan Hartman stepped down from his role, citing ongoing health issues.

“I am excited to have been chosen to fill the unexpired term of president-elect,” Pugh says. “It is a challenging role and I look forward to diving into it and helping to guide AWPA through the next year of my presidency.”   

Pugh has been active with APWA for more than 20 years, starting with serving on the Engineering and Technology Committee. He’s served on other national committees within APWA and is an active leader in the North Carolina chapter of the APWA. He is a client success manager with WithersRavenel in Asheville, North Carolina. He will assume the office of president at the Public Works Expo scheduled to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 28-31.

“APWA has an excellent process with which to fill vacancies in unfortunate situations,” says APWA President Stan Brown. “The selection of Keith Pugh as president-elect means APWA will continue to be in good hands. His breadth and depth of experience will serve the association well.”   

For additional information about the APWA, contact Jared Shilhanek, APWA marketing & communications director at jshilhanek@apwa.net or at (816) 595–5257.

Recycled PP and HDPE reduce carbon emissions more than recycled PET.

Let’s cut to the chase—plastic waste management may be on everyone’s mind, but disparate initiatives are falling woefully short. In 2010, between 5 million and 13 million metric tons of plastic waste entered the ocean from developing countries with insufficient solid waste infrastructure and high-income countries with very high waste generation. That was 12 years ago and, rather than improving, the situation is getting worse.

According to a report by Science Advances, in 2016, the U.S. generated the largest amount of plastic waste of any country in the world at 42 million metric tons. Between 0.14 and 0.41 metric tons of this waste were dumped illegally in the United States, and 0.15 to 0.99 million metric tons were inadequately managed in countries that imported materials originally collected in the United States for recycling.

The report goes on to show that the amount of plastic waste generated in the United States and estimated to enter the coastal environment in 2016 was up to five times larger than that estimated for 2010.

The direct impact of waste mismanagement sits at the heart of climate change. Because materials are discarded and replaced by new materials, more than 1.3 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions are generated annually. Increased recycling rates and increased use of recycled content can save more than half the CO2 produced by landfilling this waste.

In fact, it has been estimated that by significantly improving waste collection, sorting and recycling, we can reduce CO2 emissions by between 2.1 billion to 2.8 billion metric tons per year compared with business as usual.

While the above is a clear reminder that everything we put into production should be designed to be recycled or reused, we also need to take into account that not all recycled plastics have an equal carbon footprint. This little-known fact potentially has a huge impact on the way we should view recycling.

Take polypropylene (PP). This is a versatile polymer used in many products we use daily, from delicatessen tubs and beverage caps to yogurt cups and trays for meat, fish and fruits. In fact, PP accounts for around 20 percent of the world’s plastic.

According to The Recycling Partnership’s 2020 State of Curbside Recycling report, PP is not broken out as a separate polymer in the United States. To date, it largely has been collected in curbside programs and sorted in material recovery facilities (MRFs). Many MRFs have specific polymer sorting capacity focused on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) because these polymers are in higher demand in the market. They also are more readily recognized mainly as bottles and are presumably available in higher quantities than PP (pots, tubs and trays) in the household stream.

Yet this same report suggests that as much as 17 pounds of PP could be available per year from a single-family household. This would place PP at a higher generation rate than natural and colored HDPE, with total annual PP tonnage generated by single-family households in the U.S. estimated at 827,000 tons.

Despite this data, a serious lack of infrastructure to collect and recycle PP in the United States means this valuable material is on the verge of being removed from use across the 50 states. The hard facts are that collection and recycling rates for all plastics in the United States are dropping—PET is down from 30 percent a few years ago to 27 percent as of 20210. Ironically, recyclers are running short on materials.

In the case of PP, which is barely being recovered, it is a significant missed opportunity. Recovering PP could offer increased economic benefit and jobs, as well as reduce climate impacts, with the latter being one of the most pressing reasons to readdress PP.

A recent life cycle assessment by Plastics Europe, Brussels, that compares the carbon footprint of a range of different recycled plastics shows that recycled HDPE (such as milk bottles) and recycled PP (such as most of our pots, tubs and trays that contain our food) have a 25 percent lower carbon footprint than recycled PET.  What this tells us is that 30 percent recycled-content PP or HDPE plastic has the same carbon footprint as 73 percent recycled-content PET.

PP plays a valuable role in protecting and storing food. It is most often used for single-serve containers, such as soup pots, ice cream tubs and takeaway food containers. On top of being one of the U.D. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved food-contact materials, it is microwave safe and nonvolatile, which means it will not react with any type of food it stores whether it's acidic, basic or liquid.

The downside is that, until recently, we have been unable to produce food-grade recycled polypropylene (FGrPP), which has meant all PP food packaging is only made from virgin plastics.

These complexities are not unique to the United States but a large, global challenge that has, in part, been driven by a focus on recycling PET drink bottles. 

The wide use of the pots, tubs and trays that are placed in the recycling boxes yet not generally recovered for specific recycling has not been widely mentioned. PP is rarely used to make bottles and is missing from the recycling stream. Additionally, the complications of recycling PP for reuse in food-grade packaging have traditionally limited the economics of recycling.

The good news is that we now have cutting-edge technologies to specifically sort and decontaminate PP to food-grade quality. It has taken nine years of extensive research to reach this point, however Nextloopp, a multiparticipant project developed by London-based Nextek Ltd., is well-underway to creating postconsumer FGrPP, which should be on the market within 18 months.

Two key components of this project address the historical barriers to recycling PP. The first is PolyPrism, commercially proven marker technology to separate food-grade PP from the rest. The second is PPristine, a decontamination technology to ensure compliance with food-grade standards in the USA as well as in the U.K. and the EU.

As we get closer to closing the loop on FGrPP, we now have an unparalleled opportunity to redress the balance and boost recycling of a polymer that not only has a relatively reduced carbon footprint but that also plays a vital role in reducing food waste, yet another key factor in our race against global warming.

Minimizing our waste will only occur once we actively start unlocking the value in the materials we still consider as part of the “waste” stream. Realistically, we can’t eliminate plastic from the supply chain and, even if we did, that wouldn’t solve the world’s climate crisis. Quite the contrary.

According to a waste reduction model, if all of the 37.4 million tons of single-family recyclables were put back to productive use instead of lost to disposal, it would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 96 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. It would also conserve an annual energy equivalent of 154 million barrels of oil and achieve the equivalent of taking more than 20 million cars off the U.S. highways, not to mention generate an estimated 370.000 full-time-equivalent jobs.

What we need to do is efficiently close the loop on each different polymer. We need to expand our success story with PET to all polymers and stop taking a "one solution for all" approach that sees us sweeping millions of tons of plastic resources into our oceans and also removing a polymer from food packaging that could help to reduce food loss and waste globally. 

In 2004, Edward Kosior founded U.K.-based Nextek Ltd. to provide consultancy services to assist in the strategic approaches to sustainable packaging, waste reduction and minimal life cycle impact. He is Nextek’s managing director and is involved with many industry associations, universities and research organizations. He can be contacted at edkosior@nextek.org.

Integrated producer Trinecké železárny says it melted nearly 800,000 tons of scrap in 2021.

Czech Republic-based steel producer Trinecké železárny says its blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steelmaking complex melted nearly 800,000 metric tons of scrap metal in 2021, including all of its own metal scrap generated via its production process.

The company also says its blast furnace “recycles over 100,000 metric tons of separated metal-bearing fractions contained in slag each year.”

Ceslav Marek, the firm’s director of production, says, “These are used to replace natural iron ores.”

Trinecké says it has been “striving for several years” to attain “maximum possible use of b-products of metallurgical production by recycling.” The company says the use of slag and metallurgical gases also yields “significant CO2 savings.”

Regarding slag, the company says it supplies granulated blast furnace slag, which is produced during the pig ironmaking process, to cement producers. “Last year, we supplied nearly 600, 000 metric tons of material to cement plants,” Marek says. “That means that we have saved approximately 550,000 metric tons of CO2 that would otherwise have been generated by burning limestone and clay during [cement] production.”

Granulated slag also saved the construction industry nearly 250,000 metric tons of natural aggregates in 2021, with that amount replaced by slag from Trinecké železárny in the production of concrete. Also being put into practice is the use of steel slag and iron oxide dust particles (arising during iron production) to produce a special heavyweight concrete, the firm says.

“We have been building our business on the principles of sustainable business for a long time,” says Jan Czudek, CEO of Trinecké železárny. “Now, the topic has come into the spotlight in all fields. Metallurgy is one of the most demanding in terms of raw material and energy consumption.  That is why we strive for maximum use of all by-products of our production.”

The Trinec complex also uses more than 90 percent of the metallurgical gases it generates during production (from the blast furnace, converter and coke oven), replacing the consumption of up to 500,000 tons of thermal coal or 450 million cubic meters of natural gas, according to Trinecké železárny.

Czudek calls the company one of the leaders in the circular economy in comparison with many other firms in the European metallurgical sector.