Great News!
After 5 years of trials at our sister company "Retroworks de Mexico" (see NPR Living on Earth, and MarketPlace), approval of the glass recycling system under EPA CRT Rule last year, and a $469,000 "Fair Trade Recycling" research grant with 3 universities to study the process, Good Point Recycling's CRT Glass management is in the news again.
This month we are being flown as a FINALIST to the National Recycling Innovators Forum in New Orleans, hosted by the national Resource Recycling Conference. This is a very prestigious national competition, which includes all types of recycling innovation (paper, glass, plastic, compost, you name it). Our "Fundente Production Partnership" (FPP) proposal is recognized as a way for electronics recyclers across the nation to cooperatively share in this new market. Basically, it supports the use of old TV CRT glass as leaded silicate to replace as a necessary ingredient in copper, zinc and gold smelting. A single copper smelter we are working with in Mexico uses over 200 tons per day of leaded silicate "fundente" or fluxing agent, and copper smelters (like Phelps Dodge in Arizona) would also become end markets in replacing mined Angelsite, Feldspar, and other virgin leaded silicates for their smelting processes.
News about the Innovators Forum is here, the winning proposal submitted by Good Point Recycling of Middlebury, Vermont is described here (FPP).
What's the bad news? We know it works. The challenge is the perception, at Smelters, that "no good deed goes unpunished". See "CRT Market Murder Mystery" (aka the "Friendly Fire Blog") for the history of past market "solutions". Just because these smelters can recycle the piles of CRT glass does not mean they will. "We make $55,000,000 per day" one anonymous smelter engineer told me. "We'd love the chance to do something environmentally positive. But the transaction costs and liabilities of working with environmentalists are deadly. Why take material that needs a lawyer when we own the mine and it asks no questions?"
WELCOME TO THE 2014 RECYCLING INNOVATORS FORUM!
The Recycling Innovators Forum is a venue for inventors and innovative organizations to present their game-changing ideas on how to advance recycling. The Forum offers innovators throughout the recycling community the chance to compete for additional funding, marketing opportunities and industry support.
Co-located with the annual Resource Recycling Conference, the Forum is designed to elevate the best and brightest ideas in recycling to the national stage and connect them with the companies, institutions and organizations that can help turn them into reality. Original ideas, inventions and processes presented at the Forum are "shovel-ready" and capable of producing a real and immediate positive impact on the recycling industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment