Target announces new corporate waste, recycling goals
The retail company says it exceeded its 2020 goal to divert 70 percent of its retail waste from landfills.
Target, Minneapolis, released its "2018 Corporate Responsibility" report July 18, which highlighted an array of growth areas the company is pursuing. The company's initiatives were segmented into four key categories: Empower Teams, Serve Guests, Foster Communities and Design Tomorrow.
As part of its Design Tomorrow initiative, the company outlined a number of waste and recycling goals for the future, as well as targets that the company has already hit.
Target exceeded its 2020 goal to divert 70 percent of its retail waste from landfills through reuse or recycling ahead of deadline. The company has set a new goal to hit 75 percent diversion by the end of 2018.
Target adopted The Consumer Goods Forum's Food Waste Resolution, committing to halve the company's food waste within its operations by 2025.
In 2017, Target launched an organics recycling program at 66 Target store locations. Building upon the learnings from those locations, the company plans to expand the program to 209 additional stores (including four distribution centers and one food distribution center) in 2018, totaling 307 Target locations. In addition, the company composts organic waste at its corporate headquarters. In 2017, Target composted 582,000 pounds of organic waste.
In 2017, Target's electronics recycling program recycled more than 4.2 million pounds of electronics.
The company is working closely with its suppliers and other partners to eliminate expanded polystyrene—foam packaging that is difficult to recycle.
As part of the company's work with the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, Charlottesville, Virginia, Target is continuing to look for ways to add the How2Recycle label to its owned-brand product packages. The label is an industry standard that lets consumers know exactly how to recycle a piece of packaging.
As the first retailer to join The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia, Target says it is continuing to invest to increase access to curbside recycling in communities.
The company has joined industry efforts to create more demand for recycled packaging. This includes the Materials Recovery for the Future Collaborative, a project working toward a vision that all flexible packaging can be recycled.
"This work is a journey—and while we have a long way to go, I'm proud of our progress," Target CEO and Chairman Brian Cornell says of the report. "Every action we take that strengthens the health and vitality of the communities where we live and work is a step forward in building a better, brighter future for Target, the people we serve and the planet we all share."
Report examines global electronics recycling industry
More than 190 companies from around the world are profiled in the report.
Posted by DeAnne Toto
Dublin-based ResearchAndMarkets.com has added a report that examines the global electronics recycling sector.
The report, "Electronics Recycling - Global Strategic Business Report," provides separate comprehensive analytics for the U.S., Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the rest of world. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2015 through 2022. Also, a six-year historic analysis is provided for these markets.
The report profiles 194 companies, including many key and niche players such as:
AERC Recycling Solutions (USA);
American Retroworks Inc. (USA);
Aurubis AG (Germany);
Boliden Group (Sweden);
Dlubak Glass Co. (USA);
Enviro-Hub Holdings Ltd. (Singapore);
Cimelia Resource Recovery Pte Ltd. (Singapore);
Exitcom Recycling GmbH (Germany);
Fortune Plastic & Metal Inc. (USA);
MBA Polymers Inc. (USA);
Sims Metal Management Ltd. (Australia);
Stena Technoworld AB (Sweden);
Ultromex Ltd. (U.K.);
Umicore N.V. (Belgium);
Universal Recycling Technologies LLC (USA); and
Zak Enterprises (USA).
The report provides an industry overview as well as market trends, drivers and issues, including collaboration, reuse, wearables, government initiatives and data security. It also provides a regulatory overview, recent industry activity, a focus on select global players and a global market perspective.
More information about this report is available at www.researchandmarkets.com/research/zfkgz3/global?w=4.
University of San Diego offers Electronics Recycling Center internship program
Five high school seniors learn electronics repair and reuse skills.
The University of San Diego (USD) Electronics Recycling Center (ERC) is a nonprofit collection space that specializes in extending the useful life of donated electronics. Since late February, the center also has been a foundational learning space for six young people—a college graduate and five high school senior interns—providing them a chance to broaden their individual skills set and gain experience in the sustainability field that potentially can help them transition in future career opportunities.
Two years after graduating from San Diego State with a degree in recreation administration that emphasized sustainability, Nicky Kullback, serving as an AmeriCorps Climate Corps Fellow, was hired by the ERC in a mentoring and guidance capacity to oversee high school student interns this past spring.
She worked with five seniors from King-Chavez High School in downtown San Diego—Jose Garcia, Jose Luis Escobedo, Jonathan Baza, Noel Rodelo and Hector Del Castillo—giving them opportunities to assist the ERC staff with various tasks. The students were at the ERC, located at 5330 Linda Vista Rd., four times a week for three-hour shifts, rotating between four different areas of the facility.
At the front desk, they gained customer service experience and were able to help other employees translate whenever a Spanish-speaking customer appeared. In the computer lab, the students worked on donated computers to determine if they could be fixed by taking them apart and rebuilding them or if it was just good for the parts. In the back warehouse, they tackled small tasks or sorting. They also tested items that had been brought in to determine their reuse value.
"I feel it was a great experience for the high school students," says Arthur Atkinson IV, ERC supervisor. "I think they were expecting to get the hands-on experience that they did get, but I think they got a lot more, too."
T first-time opportunity could continue soon.
The ERC's Assistant Supervisor Of Inventory And Recycling Matthew Dahlman says he enjoyed the chance to work with the students. "I wanted to make sure the time they spent here wasn't going to be wasted. I was pleasantly surprised at how fast they learned it all."
Once per week, the students were given the opportunity to collect old items and try to build a working computer from them.
In addition to the skills they learned, a bond developed between Kullback and the students. "I saw a lot of social improvements in each of them," she says. "When they first arrived, they were shy and timid; but, as time wore on, they gained more confidence in themselves. I learned a lot about their families, hobbies and more. It was a lot of fun being with them."
Kullback's guidance included taking the students a tour of the USD campus, discussing with them options such as community college, showing them what they'd need to know about financial aid and learning about academic programs such as computer science and engineering. Kullback also showed support by attending an exhibition event and a youth entrepreneurial program. There, Rodelo gave a presentation for a business plan he'd created and finished in second place.
"I was so proud of him. He even gave me a shout-out as a mentor," Kullback says.
The students graduated this past month, and Kullback said two of the interns already enrolled at local community colleges.
Dahlman said all five students recently returned to the ERC to say hello and to thank the ERC staff again for the experience they were provided. "For them to do that spoke volumes as to what it meant," he adds.
Kullback, who will be with the ERC in her AmeriCorps role until mid-August, says working with the internship program has widened her eyes to the possibility of a career path that can go beyond sustainability. "Education wasn't on my radar as a career before, but it's 100 percent on my radar now."
The Vecoplan V-ECO shreds all plastics
Vecoplan says it has cooperated with customers to design shredders for extreme applications.
Carrie George
Vecoplan, Bad Marienberg, Germany, says its V-ECO plastic shredder is not only energy efficient but also powerful and versatile. In close cooperation with customers, the company says its engineers have designed the machine to handle extreme use in almost 160 test series: It can shred foils, fabrics, fiber materials, hard plastics and even big bags. Around 80 processors worldwide have been successfully using this unit daily since 2013, Vecoplan says.
"Where others have to stop, we're just getting started," says Martin Klotz, area sales manager at Vecoplan.
Klotz says polypropylene fiber is difficult to process. This is a challenge for many plastics processors, especially as in-house recycling becomes more and more relevant for cost reasons. According to the company, the V-ECO 1700 is the only machine on the market that can shred large quantities of bulk material containers and maintain a constantly high-quality level as part of preprocessing, enabling customers to use the shredded material into their own production.
Since the debut of the V-ECO at K 2013 in Düsseldorf, Germany, the international fair for plastics and rubber, the machine has undergone many developments, Vecoplan says.
"Over the past few years, customers have approached us with more and more new applications," Klotz says. "Among these were extremely difficult materials which were to be shredded qualitatively and at a high throughput--besides big bags, there were nets, ropes, foils, hard and technical plastics, fabric or fiber materials and even the so-called Angel's Hair." These wafer-thin threads are feared in the plastics industry, Vecoplan says, because they interfere with production and lead to quality losses in processing.
In almost 160 test runs, the Vecoplan developers say they designed the ideal rotor geometries together with the users--even for Angel's Hair. "We can change the rotors, blades and screen to adapt the V-ECO to the input and output requirements to even match the nets and ropes that are very difficult to handle," says Klotz.
The V-ECO's hydraulically swivelling bottom flap and downward swivelling screen allow the operator easy access to the rotor, Vecoplan says. Customers can remove extraneous material, turn or exchange the counter knife or convert the machine. The material is fed continuously into the machine thanks to the inclined design of the machine base and the continuously adjustable ram control.
For energy-efficient operation, Vecoplan says it has installed the cost-effective electronic slip control (ESC) drive. "This solution makes gears and turbo clutches superfluous," says Klotz. The multipolar, asynchronous motor with its frequency converter works with a special belt drive that incorporates slip control and an extraneous material detection system with a motor brake. The developers focused on a compact machine design, Vecoplan says, that is meant to minimize the susceptibility to failure, optimize the material flow and make all service and maintenance work easier for users.
According to the company, around 80 international processors now rely on the V-ECO. These include a leading manufacturer of high-quality intermediate-bulk containers (IBCs), tanks and other containers.
"The Spanish GCR Group, manufacturer of plastic compounds and masterbatches, also relies on a V-ECO for shredding post-industrial films," Klotz says. The machine achieves a throughput of 4 to 6 tons per hour.
Vecoplan says many other companies also use the V-ECO, including BS Plastics, Birmingham, England; and Bösel Recycling Management GmbH, Bösel, Germany.
"Other shredders quickly reach their limits with these different materials, but not our V-ECO," says Klotz. "We're eager to see what kind of customer projects await us in the future."
NWRA hosts delegation with Brazilian National Union of Waste Management Companies
The event culminated in an agreement to promote cooperation between the two organizations.
Edited by Hilary Crisan-Heavilin
Left to right: Darrell Smith and Marcio Matheus.
National Waste and Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, and Marcio Matheus, president of the Brazilian National Union of Waste Management Companies, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two organizations following a week of events hosted by the NWRA.
The purpose of the MOU is to promote cooperation between the waste and recycling industries in Brazil and the United States.
"It has been a great pleasure to spend time this week with representatives of the waste and recycling industry in Brazil. I believe we have learned a lot from each other, and I look forward to a stronger and productive relationship. The MOU formalizes the increased cooperation and coordination between the two organizations," Smith says.
The delegation from Brazil represented several waste and recycling companies and other industry experts from the country.
NWRA