Veolia Opens eRecycling Center; Synagro Plans Biosolids Recyling Facility

Veolia Environmental Services has opened an electronics recycling center that will serve the Northeastern and mid-Atlantic US while Synagro Technologies says it will build a facility in Florida to recycle biosolids and yard waste into class AA compost.

Synagro’s $4.3 million facility will be based  in southwest Florida’s Charlotte County, and will be operational in early 2014. It will help the regional municipal and industrial wastewater facilities, homeowners, landscapers and local utilities recycle their organic waste, the company says.

The bio-recycling center will be able to process up to 100,000 tons of biosolids and green waste per year and create 75,000 cubic yards of Class AA compost each year, Synagro says. Its technology is already being used in three other regional compost facilities in the Western US.

Meanwhile, Veolia’s center in West Bridgewater, Mass. will recycle fluorescent lamps, ballast, batteries, computer electronics and mercury-bearing waste. It has processing equipment that allows for more than 99 percent of a fluorescent lamp to be recycled (by weight), according to the company. Aside from separating a fluorescent lamp into its core components of glass, aluminum and mercury-bearing phosphor power, Veolia says it also reclaims the mercury and works with partners to recover rare-earth elements from the phosphor powder.

Each year, Veolia processes about 15.5 million pounds of lighting and electronic waste annually and reclaims more than 155 pounds of elemental mercury from recycling fluorescent lamps. The new recycling equipment will boost capacity by 150 percent for fluorescent lamps, the company says.

Command Packaging announced last week that it’s planning to turn part of the former Firestone plant outside of Salinas, Calif., into a 124,500-square-foot recycling facility for plastics from the agricultural industry. Encore Recycling, as the new operation will be known, will eventually turn 100 million pounds of agricultural plastic each year into reusable plastic bags.

Photo Credit: Veolia Environmental Services