Taylor Construction Equipment is the new Hyundai Construction Equipment dealer in central and eastern Tennessee.

Hyundai Construction Equipment Americas (HCEA), Norcross, Georgia, has expanded its North American authorized dealer network with the addition of Taylor Construction Equipment. Taylor Construction Equipment is a division of the Taylor Group of Companies, which is headquartered in Louisville, Mississippi. For more than 90 years, Taylor has been a provider of material handling equipment, parts and service. It currently has 29 locations throughout the Southeast and south central U.S.

With the addition of this new dealership, Hyundai’s North American network now includes more than 80 dealerships operating in more than 180 locations, offering sales, service and parts for the full line of Hyundai excavators, wheel loaders, compaction rollers and other construction equipment.

“I am very excited to announce Taylor Construction Equipment as our new Hyundai Construction Equipment dealer in central and eastern Tennessee, with facilities in White House, Tennessee and Maryville, Tennessee,” Ed Harseim, HCEA district manager, North Central, says. “Taylor is an industry leader in construction equipment, forklifts and material handling products, with a goal of providing their customers with the highest quality products backed by the most responsive aftermarket service organization available. Taylor is a great option for construction equipment and material handling customers in central and eastern Tennessee with all the products and services that they provide, which now includes the industry-leading full lineup of Hyundai wheel loaders and excavators.”

“Taylor is excited to add Hyundai Construction Equipment to our portfolio of products,” Robert Taylor, president and COO of the Taylor Group of Cos., says. “Hyundai Construction is a world-class brand known for its quality products and aftermarket support.  We look forward to partnering with Hyundai in central and eastern Tennessee.”

Prince George’s County cuts ribbon on upgrade that includes several Tomra optical sorting units supplied by Van Dyk Recycling Solutions.

The Prince George’s County, Maryland, Department of the Environment (DoE) has held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its material recovery facility (MRF) in Largo, Maryland, to display new equipment the DoE says will help process recyclables “more cleanly and efficiently.”

Among the equipment installed in Largo are three new Tomra optical sorting units, an additional elliptical separator, a new permanent magnet, an eddy current separator and a master control panel (MCC). The equipment for the project was supplied by Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, Norwalk, Connecticut. Also included is a new plastics sorting line with four 75-cubic-yard storage bunkers for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE) natural, HDPE multicolored and polypropylene (PP) plastic scrap.

Prince George’s County says it was a six-month overhaul at the MRF. Ribbon-cutting event attendees included county officials, representatives from the Maryland Environmental Service (MES) agency, operators of the facility and other county officials.

“The reason the county promotes recycling is that it reduces pollution, reduces greenhouse gases, and reduces the amount of waste that ends up in our landfills,” says Floyd Holt, Prince George's County deputy chief administrative officer for government infrastructure, technology and environmental services.

“The upgraded system will allow recyclable materials to be processed more efficiently,” DoE Director Andrea L. Crooms says. “These updates will save the county time and money, as well as reinforce our mission to recycle as many uncontaminated materials in our waste stream as possible.”

The county lists separating plastics “into more valuable products” as a reason for the investment. The last updates to the sorting equipment at the MRF were made in 2007, when the county transitioned to a single-stream system to collect recyclable materials.

The MRF opened its doors in October 1993 as a 65,000-square foot facility. The facility processed more than 70,000 tons of recyclables in 2020.

Prince George’s County residents can recycle plastics with resin identification numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 in their collection bins, along with glass jars and bottles, several types of metal and paper and other items listed on this web page.

*This article was updated Sept. 30, 2021, to add that VDRS supplied the equipment for the project.

Several directors and executives at the association will serve as the association’s interim leadership team.

The Aluminum Association, Arlington, Virginia, has announced that Tom Dobbins, president and chief executive officer of the association, will be leaving his role at the end of October. Dobbins had stepped into the president and CEO position in March 2020.

The association says its board of directors has thanked Dobbins for his service to the association and the aluminum industry.

As the association conducts the search for a new president and CEO, several other executives within the association will serve on the association’s interim leadership team. The association’s interim leadership team includes Joe Quinn, vice president of external affairs at the Aluminum Association; Ryan Olsen, vice president of market growth and development at the Aluminum Association; and Matt Meenan, senior director of external affairs at the Aluminum Association.

“I have great confidence in our interim leadership team and the full association staff to continue to execute on behalf of the entire industry,” says Buddy Stemple, chair of the Aluminum Association. “The team will continue its excellent work on the Aluminum Agenda policy roadmap, our Choose Aluminum sustainability campaign and other efforts.”

Atlas Organics distinguishes itself as a leading composting provider through the development of a first-of-its-kind presort line for organics.

Since its founding in 2015, Spartanburg, South Carolina-based Atlas Organics (Atlas) has worked to revolutionize the composting industry through the development of a comprehensive organics recycling platform.

As a provider of collection, processing and consulting services for more than 1,600 homes and more than 100 organizations across nine cities, the company has seen significant growth since opening its first composting facility just six years ago.

“In 2015, we decided to ... create Atlas Organics. We worked with our first investor to raise $500,000. That helped build our first composting facility, and from there, we started expanding the hauling units,” says Gary Nihart, COO of Atlas Organics. “We [originally] started collecting food waste in upstate South Carolina, [such as in] Asheville [and] Columbia. Since then, we’ve been through several more rounds of funding and we’ve expanded operations into North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Texas.”

Currently, Atlas operates a total of six composting facilities and four hauling operations in Greenville, South Carolina; Durham, North Carolina; Indian River, Florida; Tampa, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee; and San Antonia, Texas.

Most of the facilities are managed through public-private partnerships with the municipalities. Under these long-term agreements, Atlas will accept feedstocks that are controlled by the municipality in exchange for a per ton tipping fee. These feedstocks can include yard waste, food waste and biosolids.

Atlas also brings in food waste from its internal hauling division, which operates collections for commercial and residential customers in South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.

“Yard waste and biosolids are typically sourced from different municipalities, usually a city or a county, under a long-term contract,” says Nihart. “We collect food waste from our residential customers [through a doorstep collection program] known as Compost House. We deliver buckets, our customers put the buckets out, we can pick it up and leave [the residents] with an empty bucket.

“We get food waste from our commercial customers as well, [such as] grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, schools, things of that nature. And then we get our food waste also from industrial customers. These are big food processors which have large amounts of food waste on a large scale, and we collect it.”

At the composting facilities, Atlas’ process begins with the grinding of yard waste using horizontal grinders fed by excavators. According to the company, these machines take loose unground municipally collected yard waste and reduce it to a 4- to 6-inch-minus single-ground mulch. This material will act as a carbon source for the composting process.

After the yard waste is processed, it is either added directly to the composting process or mixed with a nitrogen source such as food waste or biosolids at an approximate 50-50 ratio by weight.

“With composting, you need a few ingredients. You need a carbon source. Typically for us this is yard waste. And you need a nitrogen source, which is food waste or biosolids—the green part of yard waste. You need carbon, nitrogen, water and oxygen,” says Nihart.

This material is then transported by wheel loader to the composting system, which is comprised of a series of air blowers and an aeration floor/piping system. This system is known as an Extended Aerated Static Pile (EASP).

With EASP composting, fresh oxygen is blown into the pile under positive pressure to maintain aerobic conditions throughout the pile, thus eliminating the need for pile turning. This process can accelerate the decomposition of the organic waste material, achieve pathogen reduction requirements and prevent odor generation.

“We use a system of blowers with perforated pipes that are operated by computers, and these blowers are introducing oxygen at various intervals,” says Nihart. “Our piles heat up and get to the thermophilic phase where they’re really hot and there’s a lot of microbial activity breaking down the organic compounds. Then, the piles go through a mesophilic phase where there’re still microbes in there breaking it down, and some fungi get introduced.”

Compared to typical windrow composting operations, Atlas says it avoids using a diesel-powered windrow turner and limits dust generation by not turning the pile. Throughout the process, the material is monitored through various quality control methods including Solvita tests, bulk density tests, temperature monitoring and moisture monitoring through a batching protocol.

Once the material is fully composted, which can take anywhere from 45 to 60 days, it is removed from the composting system and screened to a 3/8- or ¼-inch-minus utilizing a trommel screen.

“We screen it down to a certain size so that it’s got that nice earthy feel to it—it’s not big and chunky. Then, it’s ready for the customer,’ Nihart says.

This material is also lab tested for U.S. Compost Council STA Certification. After the results are analyzed to confirm national and state limits are met, the material is sold into the marketplace.

In an effort to increase efficiency of its organics processing, Atlas has deployed new technology to better address contamination challenges in current food waste feedstocks at its most recent composting facility in San Antonio.

“The expansion into San Antonio was prompted by the fact that we saw Texas as an underserviced market in the organics industry and specifically saw that the city of San Antonio had larger desires to try to divert residential organics from the landfill,” says Atlas CEO Joseph McMillin. “That came with challenges. So, we’ve worked with the team at the city of San Antonio to develop a unique solution for them to divert that material from the landfill that other processors could not help with.”

According to a release, the city of San Antonio has implemented residential food waste recycling programs but has historically outsourced its services. With Atlas, the city will now have its own composting facility at Nelson Gardens.

The new $10.8 million facility—built in partnership with Apex, North Carolina-based Crowder Construction—uses a one-of-a-kind patent pending presort line developed by Atlas to remove contaminants from the city’s green cart programs.

Atlas worked with new and current vendors, such as Rotochopper, St. Martin, Minnesota; AMP Robotics, Louisville, Colorado; and OEM Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, to design the system. Atlas is also utilizing custom control systems at the site to optimize the aerated static pile composting process that was designed by the company’s internal engineering team.

“To our knowledge, [this facility is] the first time that AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics have been used in a pre-sort facility for organics in North America,” says McMillin. “The goal of the presort facility is to remove contaminants from the organic waste stream prior to processing instead of trying to remove those contaminants after they’ve been through the composting process via vacuums and wind sifters that have historically been attached to the screening process.

“Our thought behind that was that it’s easier to remove the contaminants, such as plastics, when they’re moving in a more whole form than after they’ve been through the grinder and through a 45-day decomposition process and touched by multiple pieces of equipment.”

For McMillin, the biggest issue he sees with managing the incoming organic waste stream is contamination. In order to derive a high-value product, he emphasizes the importance of having a clean feedstock going into the process.

“The use of robotics and artificial intelligence in organics is going to allow companies like Atlas Organics to really go after some of the dirtier feedstocks that have contamination,” says Nihart. “All the different kinds of plastics, metals and things like that can get [into] feedstocks, especially when you’re dealing with food waste. There are feedstocks, historically, the industry has stayed away from just because it’s too hard to deal with. AI allows us to turn those feedstocks into revenue streams and turn it into a valuable soil amendment.”

Atlas currently has another municipality looking into implementing similar technology within the next 12 to 18 months.

“We’re always open to working with other municipalities, specifically ones with green cart programs where contamination is a major factor for them,” says McMillin.

This article originally ran in the Sept. issue of Waste Today. The author is the assistant editor of Waste Today and can be reached at hrischar@gie.net.

The organization awarded certifications to Centre County Recycling and Mazza Recycling.

The Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority (CCRRA), Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and Mazza Recycling Services, Tinton Falls, New Jersey, both received Material Recovery Facility (MRF) Glass Certifications from the Glass Recycling Coalition (GRC). The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based coalition has awarded a gold certification to CCRRA and a bronze certification to Mazza Recycling.

According to a news release from the GRC, the CCRRA is the first MRF to be awarded a Gold MRF Glass Certification in Pennsylvania and the first multistream MRF to receive certification. Glass recycling has been an integral part of Centre County’s program since its inception in 1989. 

“CCRRA is proud to have a gold certification that reinforces that glass is an important part of the recycling puzzle,” says Joanne Shafer, deputy executive director of the CCRRA. “The glass container industry in Pennsylvania is still vibrant and employs many in our commonwealth.” 

The coalition says Mazza Recycling Services built its MRF in 2020, processing single-stream recyclables at 40 tons per hour. The facility features glass sorting technology to produce cleaner glass for end markets.  

“We are so honored and amazed that the GRC chose to give Mazza Recycling the first-ever Bronze MRF Glass Certification,” says Carlos Batista, MRF plant manager at Mazza Recycling. “We couldn’t be more proud of the work we do here to further our mission of working towards a greener tomorrow.”

Launched in the fall of 2019, the GRC MRF Glass Certification program has awarded 13 certifications to MRFs, one bronze, two silver and ten gold. In 2021, the glass certification criteria were updated to prioritize end market consistency and more thorough glass cleaning before beneficiations. 

The coalition says eligible applications are judged on current infrastructure and a glass purity measure aligning with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries’ three-mix specification. An independent committee scores certification levels into gold, silver and bronze certifications.

GRC’s website currently hosts an interactive map showing MRFs, glass processors and end markets across the country. GRC certified MRFs are noted on this map, along with public recognition of this certification.