Covanta Plant Recycles Metals from Waste-to-Energy Facilities

Covanta has started up its new metal recycling processing operation in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania.

The facility cleans and sorts metal materials recovered from a number of Covanta’s energy-from-waste (EfW) facilities in the Northeastern US.

The facility has a design capacity for up to 12,000 tons per month and includes access to a deep water port, which provides the opportunity to load bulk cargo ships for domestic and international shipments.

Covanta says that since 2012 it has made significant investments to recycle more metal from the waste stream. Using new technology and installing systems to recycle more ferrous and nonferrous metals, metal recovery has improved by the equivalent of 16 cars per facility per week for ferrous, and for non-ferrous it has increased by the equivalent of 25,000 additional aluminum cans per week, according to the company.

In total, Covanta now recycles about 500,000 tons of metal per year. The company’s metals recycling also saves about 1.2 million tons of greenhouse gases.

Covanta operates 45 EfW facilities around the world, converting about 20 million tons of waste into electricity.

Earlier this year Covanta broke ground on a $45 million automated materials recovery facility in Indianapolis that it says is modeled after the most modern recycling facilities in the world. It is planned to open in 2016.