Category: Recycling

Inside Clean Energy: Here Come the Battery Recyclers

1/14/2022

The battery economy is booming, and with it a recycling industry is bracing itself for a wave of battery waste. Battery Resourcers of Worcester, MA is planning to build a plant in Georgia that will be capable of recycling 30,000 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries/yr. It will be the largest battery recycling plant in North America when it opens later this year. Its reign will be brief because Li-Cycle is building an even larger battery recycling plant near Rochester, NY scheduled to open in 2023. The company said last month that it is modifying its plans in a way that increases the plant’s size, a response to forecasts of high demand for recycling. - Inside Climate News

She asked CNN where her recycling goes. See what we discovered

8/17/2021

CNN found out why. Lilly Geisler goes to a lot of trouble to recycle. So she left CNN a voicemail asking: How much of my recycling actually gets recycled? John Sutter travels to Muncie, Indiana, to find out. See more from our "Let's Talk About the Climate Apocalypse" series. (A lot of your plastic isn't being recycled.) - CNN

A Recycling Plan to Clear Wind Turbine Blades From Graveyards

1/5/2021

It’s difficult to recycle a gigantic wind turbine. The blades are built to withstand extreme weather, from scorching desert heat to hurricane-like winds, and that means their life almost always ends in a landfill. In Europe alone, about 3,800 blades will be removed every year through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF, as the oldest turbines reach retirement age. Now a Danish startup has found a way to crush these blades, turning an ultra-resistant mix of fiberglass and industrial glue into barriers designed to block noise from highways and factories. Copenhagen-based Miljoskarm can grind the blades into small pieces of 1 to 2 centimeters with the same type of machines used in auto junkyards. The material is then placed in recycled plastic cases that block noise at least at the same level as barriers made from aluminum and mineral wool, with less maintenance required. - Bloomberg Green

A Desert City Tries to Save Itself With Rain

11/25/2020

In an average year, Brad Lancaster can harvest enough rain to meet 95% of his water needs. Roof runoff collected in tanks on his modest lot in Tucson, Arizona where 100 degree days are common in the summer months — provides what he needs to bathe, cook and drink. When Lancaster gets thirsty, he sips filtered rain “known as sweet water,” he says, having never picked up salt from soil. When he wants a hot shower, he places his outdoor shower’s water tank in the sun. To irrigate his fruit trees beyond the Sonoran Desert’s two rainy seasons, which bring the vast majority of Tucson’s precipitation, he uses fresh rainwater or greywater — the latter being, in his case, used rainwater leftover from the shower, sink, or washing machine. - Bloomberg

Dutch Inventor Cleans World's Most Polluted Rivers in Effort to Save Oceans

10/19/2020

Just 10 rivers are responsible for around 90% of all the ocean's plastic, according to a 2017 study. "...If we focus on the worst rivers, we believe we can really have the fastest and most cost-effective way to close the tap and prevent more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place." Ocean Cleanup is deploying floating trash collectors or "Interceptors." These solar-powered, autonomous systems use the rivers' currents to guide the trash onto a conveyor belts that carry the waste to awaiting bins. - CNN

This Game-Changing Solar Company Recycles Old Panels Into New Ones

10/11/2020

At a recycling plant in Ohio, next to the company’s manufacturing facility, First Solar uses custom technology to disassemble and recycle old panels, recovering 90% of the materials inside. It runs similar recycling systems in Germany and Malaysia. Right now, the holistic lifecycle approach isn’t common among other solar producers. But Wade says that now is the time to think about the problem. “Our aim for solar is to help our customers decouple their economic growth from negative environmental impacts,” he says. “So it is kind of a mandatory point for us to address the renewable-energy-circular-economy nexus today and not 20 years from now.” - Fast Company

Inside Clean Energy: Here Come the Battery Recyclers

She asked CNN where her recycling goes. See what we discovered

A Recycling Plan to Clear Wind Turbine Blades From Graveyards

A Desert City Tries to Save Itself With Rain

Dutch Inventor Cleans World's Most Polluted Rivers in Effort to Save Oceans

This Game-Changing Solar Company Recycles Old Panels Into New Ones

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