Under the agreement, Action will continue to manufacture vibratory process equipment for a range of industries.

Action Equipment Co. Inc., Newburg, Oregon, has been acquired by Webster Industries. Webster Industries, based in Tiffin, Ohio, is an employee-owned manufacturer of conveyor chains, sprockets, vibrating conveyors and specialty castings.

Under the agreement, Action will continue to manufacture vibratory process equipment for a range of industries. This equipment will include its product lines such as the Taper-Slot Screen, Vibra-Snap Screen and Dense-Out.

“It is an exciting merger—one in which both companies strategically complement each other. Action’s team is passionate about its core competence and strengths, vibratory technology and looks forward to continued marketplace growth alongside Webster. Expect new products, enhanced service for existing relationships, and as always, exceptional equipment designs,” Action President Andrew LaVeine says. “As an employee-owned organization, both Webster and Action operate as a team of owners with each person bringing their abilities, talents, experience and backgrounds for a shared purpose, which is to serve our customers, and we are deeply committed to this end.”

The company says it shares the Alliance’s belief that collaboration and collective action are critical to eliminating plastic waste.

Packaging producer Amcor, with global headquarters in Zurich, has announced that it is joining the Alliance to End Plastic Waste at the Executive Committee level.

The company says it shares the Alliance’s belief that collaboration and collective action are critical to eliminating plastic waste, adding that its membership in the organization also aligns with Amcor’s 2025 Sustainability Pledge to develop all its packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2025.

“Amcor’s extensive innovation capabilities are delivering packaging designed to achieve the commitment to make all our packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025,” Ron Delia, Amcor CEO, says. “But keeping waste out of the environment also requires collaboration across the global value chain for better waste management and recycling infrastructure and to educate consumers. The Alliance serves as a crucial forum for that collaborative effort across parties aligned on the need to deliver more sustainable outcomes. I am excited that Amcor is taking up this leadership role within the Alliance and we look forward to working with the other Alliance members to advance on our shared ambitions for responsible packaging.”

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste Chief Executive Jacob Duer says, “The addition of Amcor to the Alliance’s Executive Committee strengthens our links to the packaging industry. Amcor’s expertise as the world’s leading diversified packaging company will bring new capabilities to the Alliance’s project portfolio and brings us closer towards achieving our vision of ending plastic waste in the environment.”

The Alliance’s 57 member companies agree to support projects to build and scale solutions to end plastic waste in the environment. Examples of the Alliance’s current projects include Project STOP Jembrana in Indonesia, where a new waste management system is being built to address high volumes of plastic waste, while the End Plastic Waste Innovation Platform fosters startups across the plastic value chain to accelerate innovation to eliminate plastic waste.

Amcor says it has projects underway to address waste leakage and is aligned with the Alliance’s four strategic pillars of waste management infrastructure, innovation, education and engagement and cleaning up.

The packaging company also partnered with McKinsey.org to develop recycling and waste management solutions for communities in Latin America. Amcor is also a member of the World Wildlife Fund-led activation hub, ReSource: Plastic, and has global partnerships with Ocean Conservancy and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative.

The grants will be used to promote recycling activities in the region.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) and Falls Church, Virginia-based The Recycling Partnership have announced that they will award $1.2 million in Renew Michigan grants to western Michigan communities, businesses and nonprofits to promote recycling activities. The Renew Michigan fund was created with bipartisan approval by the legislature in 2019 to bolster the state’s recycling efforts. In west Michigan, the 2021 Renew Michigan grant recipients include:

“The West Michigan community, business and nonprofit recipients that are receiving a combined record-setting total of $1.2 million in Renew Michigan grants are part of EGLE’s strategy to support recycling infrastructure, improve the quality of recyclable materials and promote market development using the Renew Michigan Fund,” says EGLE Director of Materials Management Division Elizabeth Browne.

According to a news release from EGLE on the grants, some of the funding will be used by recipients to upgrade equipment to integrate robotics or introduce new processing technologies as part of a long-term strategy to create cleaner streams of recyclables that could be more attractive to domestic buyers of recycled materials.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state legislators want to double the state’s recycling rate to 30 percent by 2025 and ultimately reach 45 percent annually, EGLE reports. Michigan’s current 15 percent recycling rate is the lowest in the Great Lakes region.

Recycling across Michigan is receiving a boost as state legislators have increased EGLE’s funding for recycling projects from $2 million annually to $15 million per year moving forward. EGLE says the additional funds are being used to support development of recycling markets, increase access to recycling opportunities and support planning efforts to grow recycling at the local level.

Additionally, EGLE says The Recycling Partnership released results that show that the city of Grand Rapids successfully reduced curbside recycling contamination by 40 percent during its Feet on the Street campaign in the fall of 2020. Approximately 65 to 75 percent of Grand Rapids households were inspected four times between September and October as part of a pre- and postcampaign analysis.

EGLE says the city is using the Feet on the Street data to roll out a 2021 hyper-local educational campaign, which will inform the city’s 55,000 households on best recycling practices and emphasize avoiding the use of plastic bags and plastic wrap in recycling bins. Beyond the educational campaign, data from the Feet on the Street effort will be used to develop recycling activities this year, such as encouraging all households with recycling carts to participate in the program; households that repeatedly put out carts with high levels of contamination will receive rejection tags and be offered to participate in an educational program with Kent County, Michigan, before they can get their cart back in service; and direction on routes that have high amounts of contamination.

“These examples show the Feet on the Street data can be used to continually improve Grand Rapids’ recycling program by increasing participation and decreasing contamination,” says Jill Martin, director of community programs at The Recycling Partnership. “The Grand Rapids Feet on the Street campaign proves that clear education, direct engagement with residents, working with stakeholders and collecting data can all lead to a positive impact on the quality of the recycling stream.”

“Grand Rapids and communities across West Michigan are excited to continue partnering with EGLE in 2021 to create and expand recycling efforts,” says Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss. “These efforts are aligned with our sustainability goals in that they divert materials from landfills and help grow our local economy by supporting businesses committed to using recovered materials.”

Paper mills across the globe report strong containerboard markets, which has helped boost demand for old corrugated containers.

Paper mills across the globe have been reporting high sales volumes and pricing for containerboard.

In their latest earnings reports released in February, North American packaging producers Cascades and Greif were among them, helping to increase demand for recovered paper in recent months.

According to its latest earnings report in late February, Hong Kong-based Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Co. also report healthy demand for containerboard, announcing that will invest 5.4 billion renminbi (or about $8.3 billion) in Malaysian paper mills that will manufacture corrugated products.

As a result of strong containerboard markets, most mills are hungry for recovered paper. In response, domestic and export old corrugated container (OCC) prices have risen, and mixed paper pricing has held its ground. Prices for high grades, such as sorted office paper (SOP), have risen as well.

MRF operators say generation of OCC has not quite kept up with the demand from mills.

“We could sell more OCC if we had it,” says Steve Frank, owner of Pioneer Recycling Services, which operates two material recovery facilities (MRFs) in the Pacific Northwest. “We’re not lacking demand.”

“Supply [of recovered paper] really decreased after we got through the holidays,” adds Miriam Holsinger, vice president of business intelligence and operations at Minneapolis-based Eureka Recycling. She says OCC generation was slightly steadier than mixed paper generation in February.

Frank says the recovered paper coming into their MRFs has been slightly dirtier over the past year compared with before the pandemic.

“The dirtier material can be a challenge for operators,” he says. “But we have invested in paper sorting optics, so our quality outbound after we sort is very good.”

As of early March, MRF operators and brokers alike say recovered paper prices are rising much more quickly in export markets than in domestic ones.

A broker based on the East Coast says he noticed OCC prices double in a 24-hour period during the first week of March. “Everyone who’s bought OCC from me ever is calling, raising their prices daily. I’ll get an email from the same person five days in a row offering an increased price each day.”

He adds that paper mills in India are helping to drive recovered paper demand this year. “India has been a driving force ever since China left the market last year,” the broker says. “They just can’t get material fast enough there.”

A MRF operator based in the South says mills in other parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Vietnam, also are buying recovered paper at high prices. He adds that domestic mills will need to increase their buying prices to remain competitive.

“Mills everywhere are busy,” he says. “I’ve been trying to ship more export because of the pricing differential.”

The broker based on the East Coast adds that it’s better to move export than domestic right now in terms of pricing. But, he says, current freight-related issues can make export sales difficult.

The broker adds that high export prices don’t matter if securing freight is not possible. He adds that it’s important to also maintain relationships with domestic outlets as well.

Securing trucking and freight has been challenging for the past few months. Recyclers and brokers say these problems were exacerbated in mid-February when a winter storm hit most of North America.

As a result of the mid-February storm, the broker based on the East Coast says some piers shut down temporarily.

According to a March 6 article in the New York Times, a lack of dockworkers and truck drivers—in part because of the pandemic—has slowed container shipping at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, reported in one of the port’s board meetings recently that he suspects that ports will remain backlogged until midsummer.

Although transportation is very tough Frank says it’s the only detriment to his business right now. He says, “Transportation is a headwind, but it does look like for recovered paper and many commodities right now there are a lot of good tailwinds.”

Restauranteur José Andrés has received humanities medal for World Central Kitchen relief initiative.

The Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) has announced chef José Andrés as the opening speaker of its ISRI2021 online convention. The chef, who also has led hunger relief efforts, has been scheduled for a Tuesday, April 20, time slot. The association’s 2021 virtual conference takes place April 20-22 and April 27-29.

“Following a year like no other, we can all use some additional inspiration, and who better to provide it than chef José Andrés,” says ISRI Vice President of Meetings and Convention Chuck Carr. “Chef José Andrés shares in the commitment of recyclers to do their part to make the world a better place. He has built a restaurant business into a world-renowned brand. Through food, he has led efforts in education and humanitarian relief at home and around the world.”

Named one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People” in both 2012 and 2018 and the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, José Andrés is the chef/owner of Washigton-based ThinkFoodGroup.

ISRI describes him as being a committed advocate of food and hunger issues. In 2010, he formed World Central Kitchen, a non-profit specializing in delivering food relief in the wake of natural and humanitarian disasters.

It was involved in serving nearly 4 million meals to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria and has responded to dozens of disasters worldwide and distributed tens of millions of meals in the process, says ISRI. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has partnered with restaurants, small farms, and community leaders around the country to combat food insecurity.

A naturalized United States citizen originally from Spain, Andrés also has an advocate for immigration reform and in 2014 was named by President Barack Obama as that year’s “Outstanding American by Choice.”

On the culinary front, Andrés is also known for his avant-garde cuisine and his award-winning group of nearly three dozen restaurants located in the U.S. and beyond, according to ISRI.

More information on the ISRI2021 online event can be found on this web page.