German shredder producer says it now employs about 190 people to serve the global recycling market.

Leimbach, Germany-based shredder manufacturer Arjes GmbH says in just 15 years it has grown to become a leading supplier of industrial shredders for the recycling industry, “meeting growing global challenges of the numerous mountains of waste of a wide variety of materials.” In the United States, Arjes shredders are distributed by Michigan-based Bandit Industries.

The company was founded in 2007 by Norbert Hammel, whom Arjes describes as a pioneer of twin-shaft crushing and shredding. He bought the site of an old concrete factory in Leimbach and converted it into a shredder production facility that started with 19 employees.

Today, Arjes describes the headquarters site as “a buzzing operation with just about 190 employees.” The company, which started with a shredder for scrap wood, continues to develop, optimize and expand its machinery to be able to shred a wider variety of materials today, including metal, mixed materials and concrete.

“The thing that makes our machines so unique is their mobility, their wide range of applications and the fact that they are very easy to handle,” says Martin Priewe from the Arjes marketing department. “We are a relatively young company, but we have been able to grow very quickly over the last 15 years due to our commitment and willingness to innovate. Every machine we develop is a progression of the previous one. Hence our motto ‘Innovation is what keeps us thriving.’”

In 2016, Arjes launched the Impaktor 250, its first machine designed to crush stone and concrete. It also was also the first machine to be equipped with an Arjes quick-change system for shafts.

“With the development of the Impaktor 250, we wanted to clearly stand out from our competitors," says Christian Hennig, operations manager at Arjes. “We researched the market and questioned the needs of our customers. Many stated that it was difficult to change the shredding shafts and that this affected the daily work output.”

Arjes says healthy demand for its mobile shredding plants means it will continue to develop its product line “in order to be able to maintain the successful course in the future.”

EU recycling goals can be met with private sector expertise, trade associations there say.

Organizations representing recycling companies and producers of paper and board in Europe have pledged to recycle 76 percent of all paper consumed on that continent by 2030.

Representatives from several European recycling and paper organizations gathered in Brussels in late June and made the commitment as part of a European Paper Recycling Awards ceremony there.

“The recycling rates we have already reached put paper and board as industry frontrunners,” comments Ulrich Leberle, secretary of the Brussels-based European Paper Recycling Council (EPRC). “Both ongoing initiatives and planned steps will allow us to close the circular economy loop even further. The innovative projects presented yesterday at the EPRC Awards are timely examples of what it will take to get there.”

In its news release pertaining to the commitment, the Brussels-based Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI), which represents paper and board producers, states, “The new, ambitious recycling rate of 76 percent, calculated by dividing the recycling of used paper by the total paper and board consumption, should be reached by the year 2030. It represents a best-in-class performance both at global level and across material industries, as paper and board is the most recycled material in Europe.”

The commitment is contained within a document called the new European Declaration on Paper Recycling 2021-2030, say the organizations. That document “sets out measures to optimize the management of paper at every step of a continuous recycling loop,” the EPRC and CEPI say.

The organizations say that recycling loop “entails a variety of operations, from paper and board manufacturing, its conversion into products and prints, through to its collection, sorting and recycling. Each step in the process is a distinct industrial sector with only some degree of horizontal integration, making cooperation a must to reach the ambitious recycling target.”

The industry groups that have co-signed the declaration, however, also point to what they call “several enabling conditions from EU and local authorities [that] need to be met.” According to the EPRC and CEPI, these include limiting the use of discarded paper for energy recovery purposes and to “ensure that paper is separately collected to preserve the quality of the material.”

Calling separate paper collection “a prerequisite” for higher levels of recycling, the organizations say source-separated collection “needs to be further promoted.” At the same time, the coalition says it is also “pushing boundaries” to identify additional paper and board products that can be recycled.

Two recent European Paper Recycling Award winning projects tackle these challenges, says the coalition. EnEWA, a research and development project financed by the German Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, was awarded for focusing on “the optimization of sorting, cleaning and recycling paper even when it is mixed with other residual household or commercial waste.”

Awarded in the “information and education” category, the multi-stakeholder CELAB project is described by EPRC as “a cross-industry initiative to recycle self-adhesive labels.”

“The projects or campaigns competing for the awards are all game-changers in the way we recycle paper in Europe,” comments Annick Carpentier, board chair of the EPRC. “They will contribute to achieving our ambitious goal of a 76 percent paper recycling rate by 2030. This is an ambitious target and every piece of paper and board bringing us closer to it counts.”

Circular economy goals, strategies and policies in Europe will be a key topic of discussion at the 2022 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference Europe, to be held in mid-November in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Global metals firm combines hydro power with recycled content as part of Elysis effort.

London-based metals and mining firm Rio Tinto is part of a partnership offering what it calls “Canada’s first specially-marked, low carbon beverage can.” Partners in the effort include Montreal-based Rio Tinto Aluminium, brewer Corona Canada and packaging producer Ball Corp.

Rio Tinto says the 1.2 million cans, available in Ontario, were made using aluminum from Rio Tinto that also uses Elysis technology. The company refers to Elysis as “revolutionary technology that enables the production of metal without direct carbon dioxide emissions during the aluminum smelting process, instead emitting pure oxygen.”

In 2020, as part of a sustainability commitment between Rio Tinto and global brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, Rio Tinto said the two companies’ joint efforts “will see AB InBev use Rio Tinto’s low-carbon aluminum made with renewable hydropower along with recycled content to produce a more sustainable beer can.”

As part of the Corona effort, cans have been produced with a QR code designed to “inspire consumers to learn more about the cans’ low carbon footprint.” Corona Canada is a business unit of AB InBev.

Rio Tinto says currently around 70 percent of the aluminum used in cans produced in North America is made with recycled aluminum. “Pairing this recycled metal with Rio Tinto’s low-carbon aluminum – made with renewable hydropower – and metal produced using the direct greenhouse gas emissions-free Elysis smelting technology reduces carbon emissions by more than 30 percent.”

Tolga Egrilmezer of Rio Tinto says, “We look forward to putting more information into the hands of consumers so they can see how we are partnering with leading brands like Corona to help deliver more sustainable supply chains and products.”

Rio Tinto describes Elysis as a technology company created through a partnership between “aluminum industry leaders Rio Tinto and Alcoa, with support from Apple and the governments of Canada and Quebec.”

Recycler of metal byproducts handled 25 percent more furnace dust last year compared with 2020.

Luxembourg-based Befesa S.A., a provider of byproducts handling and recycling services to producers of steel and aluminum, says its recent growth is allowing it to reduce the landfilling of metals-containing dusts and residues by recycling more than 2 million metric tons of material annually.

In the company’s Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) Report for 2021 it says its operations in Europe and North America are recycling furnace dust from electric arc furnace (EAF) steel mills and byproducts from secondary aluminum producers into marketable zinc and aluminum. The North American operations were formerly known as American Zinc Recycling but are now known as Befesa Zinc US Inc.

Its business model, says Befesa, entails “decreasing the cost of production by utilizing secondary materials, and reducing the environmental impact of metals production by reducing the amount of mining that is necessary.” Adds the firm, “From the climate change point of view, Befesa has a positive impact on the environment, saving an estimated 2.4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents from entering the environment each year.

In part thanks to its Befesa Zinc US holdings, Befesa increased its furnace dust tonnage processed and recycled by 25.6 percent in 2021 compared with the prior year. Its total global output of recycled-content metals (predominantly zinc, iron oxide and aluminum) rose by 12.8 percent to 1.44 million metric tons in 2021 from about 1.28 million in 2020.

Writes the company in the recycling portion of its ESG report, “Befesa has a high efficiency in turning hazardous waste into valuable materials. Today, this efficiency is 88 percent. Befesa’s R&D team [is] focused on improving the recovery yield by finding alternative uses to the byproducts, hence, reducing the portion that goes to landfill.”

Regarding its outlook, Befesa predicts it “will benefit from global trends towards the shift to EAF steel production, waste reduction, and increasing focus on environmental impact, which will provide long-term growth to Befesa in the future years.”

The company’s chief financial officer Wolf Lehmann, interviewed by Recycling Today this May, said the firm’s business model involves collecting hazardous waste service charges, ensuring one source of stable revenue, while using zinc price hedging practices to help ensure its earnings power on the product sales side is “locked-in” rather than being subject to base metals price volatility.

Aluminum producer says it will idle one of three smelting lines in Warrick, Indiana.

Pittsburgh-based aluminum producer Alcoa Corp. says it is in the process of curtailing output from one of three operating smelting lines, or potlines, at its Warrick Operations facility in Indiana. The company cites “operational challenges.”

John Slaven, Alcoa chief operations officer, says, “Our teams will be focused on ensuring that we bring down this capacity safely while protecting production at the two other operating lines."

In its 2020 sustainability report, covering activity in the prior year, Alcoa described its “ongoing focus on increasing the recycled content in the flat-rolled aluminum produced at our Warrick Operations.”

That effort meant that in the 2019 in the United States, Alcoa was able to use 34.5 percent recycled content to make its aluminum compared with 30.4 percent in 2018. “We again anticipate increasing this amount due to equipment upgrades and other initiatives that will continue through 2020,” adds the company.

Each of the three smelting lines at Warrick have approximately 54,000 metric tons per year of capacity, according to Alcoa. The potline selected for shut down was expected to be fully curtailed by the end of the day Friday, July 1.