Coca-Cola to Open World's Largest Bottle Recycling Facility
Coca-Cola Co. and United Resource Recovery Corp. will celebrate the opening next week in Spartanburg, SC of what they claim will be the world's largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant. The plant, which is jointly owned by both companies, will produce 100 million pounds of recycled plastic for reuse back into bottles each year – the equivalent of 2 billion 20-ounce Coca-Cola bottles. The 30-acre plant has already been operating at low volumes since November. Coca-Cola has set a long-term goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of the company's bottles and cans in the United States of which it would like to achieve 30 percent by 2010...Read More »
Republic's Countywide Landfill Wins Operating Permit
Republic Services won an important victory for its troubled Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility in Pike Township, OH when the Stark County Board of Health approved its 2009 operating permit. The commissioners agreed by a 4-3 vote to allow Republic, owner of the 258-acre landfill, to continue disposing waste into Cells 8B and 8C for another 45 days before the new 22-acre Cell 16 opens. Cell 16 won final Ohio Environmental Protection Agency approval Dec. 31. Last month Republic agreed to pay a $10 million fine to the Ohio EPA to resolve environmental violations there. The company is also funding a $6 million project to construct a firebreak between the landfill's original 88 acres, where the fires and odor problems originated, and the landfill's newer Cell 7. The underground fires having been burning there for two years and are thought to be caused by aluminum dross disposed at the older portion of the site long before Republic assumed control of the facility...Read More »
EPA and California Showcase Greener Waste Equipment
Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board gathered this week at the Puente Hills Landfill in Los Angeles to showcase cleaner burning tractors, bulldozers and other earth moving equipment configured to meet the state's more stringent diesel emissions standards. By 2010, off-road earth-movers such as tractors and bulldozers must meet stringent diesel emissions standards, which the California Air Resources Board adopted in 2007. The deadlines are extended to 2015 for smaller companies. Standards include retrofitting the machines with technology which is designed to reduce smog and fine particle pollution...Read More »
Laidlaw Energy Acquires Pulp Mill Site for Biomass-to-Energy Project
Laidlaw Energy Group, through its affiliate, Laidlaw Berlin BioPower LLC, announced that it has completed the acquisition of the former Fraser Paper pulp mill site where it has been engaged for the last two years in the development of a $100 million biomass-to-energy project. The Berlin Project involves the conversion of the boiler and related equipment situated at the former Fraser Paper pulp mill site into a highly advanced 66-megawatt biomass-to-energy project that will consume some 700,000 tons of wood chips annually. Power from the Berlin Project will be sold to the Public Service Company of New Hampshire pursuant to a 20-year agreement. Commercial operations are expected to commence in late 2010...Read More »
12th Annual LMOP Conference Jan. 12-14 in Baltimore
The US EPA plans will host its 12th annual Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) conference from January 12-14 in Baltimore, MD. The event will feature exhibits and sessions dedicated to showcasing the latest technologies, carbon markets, financing LFG energy projects, estimating emissions from landfills, and feature a keynote address by Dina Kruger, the Climate Change Division Director at the EPA...Read More »
McNeilus Wins CNG Vehicle Orders
McNeilus, a division of Oshkosh Corp., is on a roll in compressed natural gas-fueled garbage trucks, having already won orders for 58 vehicles for haulers in Brookhaven, NY, and is now about to announce at least two orders for more than 140 trucks in Seattle, WA...Read More »
Renegy Executes $12 Million Tax Equity Financing
Renegy Holdings, which develops biomass energy projects using wood waste as a fuel source, said it had secured $12.3 million of tax equity financing from an institutional equity investor in exchange for a partial interest in its 24 megawatt Snowflake biomass power generation facility. The deal gives the investor access to federal production tax credits, depreciation benefits and certain cash flows that will be generated by Renegy's Snowflake plant over the next 10 years. Renegy will use the proceeds to repay debt, pay off remaining construction costs of the Snowflake facility, and pay certain severance and restructuring costs related to downsizing the company...Read More »
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