Page 9 from: April 2013
N E W S
9April 2013
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People
Joke of the Month
Business
Daniel Dienst/Graham Davy
Sims Metal Management has announced that its ceo, Daniel Dienst, will retire
when his contract expires on 30 June. He will also resign his position on the
company’s board of directors. Meanwhile, Graham Davy, ceo of Sims Metal
Management’s European business and of its global Sims Recycling Solutions
(SRS) division, has announced he is ‘no longer employed by the company’.
www.simsmm.com
New password, please!
A wife is watching as her husband is installing their
new computer. Once he is fi nished, she tells him he
better protect it with a password and advises him to
select a word that he’ll always remember. As the
computer asks him to enter the word, the man
throws his wife a macho look and, with a big grin,
types in the word he’s selected.
Reading over his shoulder, she is thoroughly annoyed when ‘mypenis’
appears on the screen. The man isn’t swayed by her objections and hits
“enter” to validate his choice. Not a second later, his wife collapses with
laughter and rolls on the fl oor in hysteria. The computer system had replied:
Too short – access denied!
Sponsored by
Sierra International
Machinery, Inc.
www.sierraintl.com
Sierra Europe
Recycling
www.sierraeurope.com
ELG Utica acquires ABS shares
ELG Utica Alloys International, the superalloys division of Germany’s ELG Haniel
Group, has acquired all the shares of ABS Industrial Resources, a UK specialist
in the sourcing, processing and supply of primary and secondary alloys. ABS will
continue to operate independently under the management of existing directors
Mark Ridgeway, Andrew Jones and Richard Hannam.
www.elguticaalloys.com
Canon
Canon, the imaging and optical products manufacturer, is rolling out an inkjet
cartridge recycling scheme across 15 countries in Europe following the success
of a one-year trial recycling programme in the UK and Germany. The scheme
allows consumers to recycle genuine Canon inkjet cartridges for free will see
97% of each cartridge is reused or recycled into other products while the remain-
ing 3% will serve the waste-to-energy sector. www.canon-europe.com
eCullet/Owens-Illinois
Leading glass manufacturer Owens-Illinois (O-I) has formed a joint venture with
Californian glass processor eCullet, called Glass to Glass. The new business ‘will
invest in sophisticated glass sorting equipment’ that will make more high-
quality recycled glass available for use in O-I plants. eCullet observes that while
glass recycling in the USA is on the increase, the sector still lacks ‘sophisticated’
glass sorting technologies. www.o-i.com and www.ecullet.com
Commission unveils green
paper on plastic waste
A blossoming future for
tyre material?
A promising solution to resource
scarcity can be found in our own gar-
dens, according to a specialist in molec-
ular genetics R&D. Dutch company
KeyGene is aiming to use the latex found
in dandelion roots to create an all-new
material for tyre production.
With global demand for rubber set to
outstrip current supply by 20% as of the
year 2020, this common weed has huge
potential as a sustainable asset and is
possibly worth US$ 100 billion a year as
a ‘renewable alternative’, KeyGene
asserts. Owing to the fact that the dan-
delion’s roots are too small to be viable
for commercial production, the biotech
fi rm plans to cross a Russian and a com-
mon variety of the plant to yield a hybrid
with ‘optimised levels of latex’.
With the support of international tyre
manufacturer Apollo Vredestein and
Wageningen University in the Nether-
lands, KeyGene has already produced a
prototype tyre. The team confi rms that
results for the rubber substitute are very
promising and expects weed-based tyres
to be available on the market as early as
fi ve years from now.
According to project scientist Hand
Mooibroek, it is proving difficult for
Europe to get its hands on enough rub-
ber for tyre production owing to rapidly
growing demand in China and India. At
the same time, trees in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Thailand are quite suscep-
tible to diseases, rendering the market
unstable. www.keygene.com
UK scores big in battery
collection
After achieving disappointing
fi gures for 2010 and 2011when collec-
tion rates of, respectively, 9.5% and 18%
were achieved, the UK battery sector
mounted a strong comeback last year.
New data from the country’s Environ-
ment Agency shows that the UK com-
fortably met the fi xed collection target
of 25% with a collection rate of nearly
28%. The UK collected a total of 10 915
tonnes of waste batteries in 2012, well
above the obligation of 9563 tonnes as
agreed under the Batteries Directive;
some 6050 tonnes represented waste
portable batteries.
The UK even managed a 32% collection
rate for the fi rst two quarters of 2012,
adds the Environment Agency. However,
collections slowed towards end of the
year, with 2120 tonnes of waste porta-
ble batteries collected between October
and December compared to 3225
tonnes between January and March.
Figures suggest the collection rate for
portable lead-acid batteries equated to
no less than 300% in 2012; production
reached 3026 tonnes while over 9100
tonnes came in for recycling. ‘We wel-
come the collection rate achieved but
recognise the concerns raised by indus-
try and reported in the trade media
about the high volume of portable lead-
acid batteries being used to meet the
targets,’ a spokeswoman for the Depart-
ment for Business, Innovation and Skills
(BIS) has stated.
www.environment-agency.gov.uk
Source: Letsrecycle.com
RI-3_NEWS.indd 9 08-04-13 09:22
