The company will build a new casting unit at its East Alton, Illinois, location.

Wieland, with North American headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, says it will invest approximately $52 million in its East Alton, Illinois, casting operations to meet growing demand for sustainable flat-rolled copper and copper alloy products. The company’s East Alton operations are the center of Wieland‘s core casting and rolling processes in North America.

The Ulm, Germany-based copper and copper alloy producer says investment plans include the construction of a new casting unit and a building expansion, which will create a platform for future growth investments.

The investment project will begin in the spring of next year with an expected completion date in 2024, according to a news release from the company.

"By investing in state-of-the-art technology at East Alton, we aim to sustain and grow important partnerships with our valued customers," says Greg Keown, president, Wieland Rolled Products North America. "Additionally, these upgrades will strengthen our ability to be a lasting community partner and great place to work in East Alton, Illinois."

Wieland says the investment reaffirms its commitment to customers and end consumers, further supports its commitment to North America and is complementary to its recently announced major recycling initiative in North America.

The partnership will address contemporary industrial challenges in the battery recycling sector involving lithium-ion batteries.

United Kingdom-based Technology Minerals (TM), a mineral exploration company, has announced that its TM-owned Recyclus Group has partnered with WMG, an academic department at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. The partnership aims to find new ways to innovate the lithium-ion battery recycling industry.

WMG and Recyclus have created an engineering doctorate focused on battery recycling technologies and transferring current and future applications. The doctorate encompasses a four-year program supporting individuals at varying career stages to address contemporary industrial and technical challenges across the battery recycling sector. 

Recyclus says it has developed the first industrial-scale process that can work across all lithium-ion battery technologies. Recyclus and WMG will be sharing this technology through the research programs at WMG, working across a range of development areas.

“In our September 2020 report, WMG highlighted that by 2040, U.K. automotive lithium-ion battery cell production alone will require 131,000 metric tons of cathodic metals,” says David Greenwood, WMG director for industrial engagement. “With the right infrastructure, recycling can supply 22 percent of this demand. This represents not only a positive environmental impact, but large savings for manufacturers that build the business case for increased battery recycling capabilities in the U.K.” 

According to an article published in the British scientific journal Nature, the increased demand between 2020 and 2050 for electric vehicles will require an expansion of lithium, cobalt and nickel supply chains and additional resource discovery. Recyclus says recycling of battery materials could play a role in reducing the supply pressures.  

“There is a clear demand building as a result of the shift to transportation electrification,” says Alex Stanbury, CEO of Technology Materials. “That now extends to key U.K. sectors, including energy storage, freight and aerospace. Working with WMG, we will remain at the forefront of our sector, focused on extracting raw materials required for lithium-ion batteries, whilst solving the ecological issue of spent batteries, by recycling them for reuse by battery manufacturers.”

Bronco Sport is the first vehicle to feature parts made from 100 percent recycled ocean plastic.

DSM Engineering Materials, Troy, Michigan, has announced that it has received an Innovation Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) along with Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Michigan, and Milwaukee-based Hellermann Tyton for the use of Akulon RePurposed recycled ocean plastic in the Ford Bronco Sport.

While recycled ocean plastics have been used to make items like clothing, shoes and other consumer products, Ford is the first automaker to use 100 percent recycled ocean plastic to produce car parts, according to the company.

“This is another example of Ford leading the charge on sustainability,” says Jim Buczkowski, vice president of research and Henry Ford technical fellow. “It is a strong example of circular economy, and while these clips are small, they are an important first step in our explorations to use recycled ocean plastics for additional parts in the future.”

Wiring harness clips are made from debris known as “ghost gear.” The parts are invisible to vehicle occupants, Ford says, weighing about 5 grams and fastening to the sides of the Bronco Sport second-row seats and guide wires that power side-curtain airbags.

Ford testing has shown that despite spending time in salt water and sunlight, the recycled ocean plastic material is as strong and durable as petroleum-based clips, and according to the company, the strength and durability of the nylon material equals that of previously used petroleum-based parts but with a 10 percent cost savings and less energy to produce.

“Solving the global challenge of ocean plastics will require our entire industry to step up and find innovative solutions to grow the circular economy,” says Lydia Swan, commercial director – Americas, DSM Engineering Materials. “We are very proud of the joint efforts of our team, Ford and HellermanTyton to make this innovative use of recycled ocean plastics possible, and we look forward to finding additional opportunities to reduce ocean plastic waste.”

DSM’s Akulon RePurposed material is made using nylon fishing nets collected from the Indian Ocean and Arabian sea. The nets are washed of salt water, dried and extruded to form small pellets, which are injection-molded by HellermannTyton into the desired clip shape. The polyamide 6 (PA6) engineering material has performance comparable to new petroleum-based plastics, according to the companies.

In 2018, DSM launched the Akulon RePurposed PA6 to address the growing challenge of reducing plastic waste in the world’s oceans. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year, making up 80 percent of all marine debris. Much of the debris culminates in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which covers an area twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France, and the World Wildlife Federation estimates abandoned fishing nets account for as much as 46 percent of the waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

“As a global leader in cable management innovation, HellermannTyton strives for eco-friendly ways to pave the path for a more sustainable future,” says Anisia Peterman, automotive production manager at HellermannTyton. “Developments like this do not come easy, so we are proud to collaborate with Ford in support of a unique product solution that contributes to healthier oceans.”

Ford has a history of using recycled plastics not collected from oceans to produce various car parts. The company uses approximately 1.2 billion recycled plastic bottles per year—about 250 bottles per vehicle—and most recently used the bottles to produce lightweight, aerodynamic-enhancing, noise-reducing underbody shields on its 2020 Ford Escape.

The report offers solutions to increase PCR in food packaging applications.

Stina Inc., Sonoma, California, has released “ 2021 Assessing the State of Food Grade Recycled Resin in Canada & the United States,” a report that was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada .  

The report is in support of the Canadian government’s work toward meeting its comment to work with industry to incorporate at least 50 percent recycled content in plastic products, where applicable, by 2030.

Stina says its staff talked with 16 companies (five reclaimers/recyclers, four consumer packaged goods companies, three converters, two trade associations and two equipment manufacturers) known to produce or consume large quantities of food-grade postconsumer resin (PCR) in North America in addition to reviewing a number of publicly available reports. The company’s report details the challenges across the mechanical recycling value chain and where investments are needed. It also addresses solutions to increase recycled resin in food packaging applications over the next five to 10 years, including increasing collection and recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) for use in food-grade applications. 

According to the study, “In Canada and the United States, the vast majority of plastic products and packaging produced each year and placed on the market is not suitable for processing into food-grade PCR. Interviews and research point to three primary reasons for this: The package or product was initially produced using nonfood-grade resin (virgin or PCR); converters add nonfood-safe additives during product or packaging production; or packaged products leach nonfood-safe contaminants into the package.

Stina’s research has identified a number of barriers to using PCR in food-contact packaging:

To address these issues, the report calls in part for greater transparency in the chemical composition of products to ensure the suitability of products for recycling in food-grade PCR; expanded use of design for recycling to improve the quality of collected material; requiring recycled-content verification (e.g., standards and labeling) to reduce false claims and drive market efficiency; and the use of various economic incentives that value products and packages with lower overall environmental impacts, including rewarding companies committed to using PCR in their food packaging. According to the report, decoupling the price of PCR from virgin resins via recycled-content requirements or advanced disposal fees would help level the playing field between virgin resin and PCR.

The report from Stina concludes, “There is a need for a holistic, systems-based approach to more recovery and reduction of environmental impact from plastics. Throughout the process, care must also be taken not to achieve the target and the associated environmental benefits at the expense of other unintended consequences that may come at a greater environmental cost.

“ … Use of PCR within food safety guidelines is a critical step in the journey toward circularity and improved environmental performance of packages and products.”

The full Stina report can be accessed here.  

Fern Piche & Sons operates a scrap yard in North Bay, Ontario.

Montreal-based American Iron & Metal (AIM) has acquired Fern Piche & Sons Ltd., a recycler based in North Bay, Ontario.

According to Fern Piche & Sons’ website, the company has been operational for more than 40 years, providing services such as scrap collection, scrap pickup, scrap metal removal and on-site crushing at its yard in North Bay.

Herbert Black, CEO of AIM, confirmed the acquisition with Recycling Today, reporting that the deal was completed Dec. 1. He says he cannot share any additional details about the acquisition for publication.