Lofty goals for MiniMRF joint venture

Archiv – Aluminium producer and recycler Novelis has launched miniMRF LLC, a joint venture with fellow US company PRFection Engineering.
MiniMRF will build and operate innovative technology designed to achieve high rates of solid waste diversion. This technology is positioned downstream to recover materials that have already eluded traditional recycling programmes and that are otherwise destined for landfills.
United States | Aluminium producer and recycler Novelis has launched miniMRF LLC, a joint venture with fellow US company PRFection Engineering.
MiniMRF will build and operate innovative technology designed to achieve high rates of solid waste diversion. This technology is positioned downstream to recover materials that have already eluded traditional recycling programmes and that are otherwise destined for landfills.
The technology provides landfills and transfer stations with the means to divert up to 15% of the municipal solid waste stream into valuable reuse applications. Currently, the technology targets aluminium cans, steel and a variety of other reusable materials. In the future, the technology could achieve diversion rates as high as 40% through recovery of PET bottles and other materials, it is claimed.
’MiniMRF has been operating successfully in central Ohio since August 2008,’ explains John Woehlke, Business Development Manager with Novelis in North America. ‘€˜We expect strong interest in the technology as people seek new ways to increase recycling and extend landfill life.’€™ All of the aluminium recovered via miniMRF will be used by Novelis in the USA to make aluminium sheet for closed-loop production of beverage cans.
In the USA, approximately half of all aluminium beverage cans – equivalent to more than 50 billion – are sent to landfills each year. Within the next decade, MiniMRF could recycle up to 4 billion used beverage cans annually, developers claim.