Sifting through a candidate`s garbage is one of the dirty tricks of politics, but now there is a machine that can do the deed at the rate of 2,500 tons a day, no tricks involved.
It`s the Read Waste Manager, one of the newest waste-handling machines introduced Tuesday at the opening of the Waste Management, Equipment and Recycling Expo at the Rosemont/O`Hare Exposition Center.
Dirty tricks is not what this machine is all about, said William M. Tryder III, marketing services manager for Read Corp. in Middleboro, Mass.
But Tryder does see the machine as a boon for communities that are rapidly filling their landfills with garbage.
All they have to do, he explained, is dig up their old garbage dumps and run the wastes through the Waste Manager. It sorts out old tires, metal, glass and other bulky items that take up much of the room in landfills and now can be reclaimed for recycling.
In effect, it is a device for ”mining” landfills.
”It reduces the volume of a landfill,” said Tryder on the exhibition floor, where rows of machines and services are on display in what is described as the most significant conference in the Midwest for solid waste disposal, recycling and integrated waste management professionals.
About half a dozen landfills in New York state and Florida are using the new device. On average, said Tryder, the Waste Manager can reduce the amount of waste in a landfill by 50 percent by removing reusable bulk items.
”You have created air space, which can be filled with new landfill material,” said Tryder, ”or if the landfill is closed, you reduce the volume and the cost of closing.”
In Massachusetts and New York, he said, it costs $125,000 an acre to close a landfill in a way that protects the environment.
”If you can take a 20-acre landfill and cut it to 10 acres, you cut closure costs in half,” said Tryder, adding that it can be economically feasible to sift wastes and consolidate the remaining trash-even hauling it to a new location.
Read is a 13-year-old company. Until recently, it sold garbage separation devices that used screens, which often became clogged with debris.
New technology uses a three-tier line of vibrating metal rods at the top of the Waste Manager, a box-like machine open at the top.
Trash is dumped on top of the slanted vibrator, and bulky items tumble forward to the ground. Smaller items and dirt fall into an enclosed compartment under the machine.
”We just in the last two weeks received the patent for this,” said Tryder. The machine comes in three sizes, capable of handling from 1,500 tons of waste a day to 2,500 tons a day.
The Waste Manager stands about 12 feet high and about 28 feet long. Ranging in price from $119,900 to $159,900, it is equipped with wheels and can be towed by a truck.
So far, said Tryder, nobody at the Expo has offered to buy one, ”but we have a couple of real good leads.”
Though recycling is a major issue among officials in the plastic industry, said Marty Forman, ”perhaps half of them are actually trying to kill recycling.”
Forman is president of Poly-Anna Plastic Products Inc. in Milwaukee.
”When we talk about a possibility of recycling (being) near death, it`s the plastic recycling ventures that are failing all across this country,”
said Forman at a session on problems and future prospects of recycling markets.
”Let`s take a look at a case in point,” he continued. ”Here`s the recycling bin made by our company, Poly-Anna Plastic Products. We took material that was going to the landfill, dirty post-use bottles, and did what everyone said we couldn`t do. We converted them into a competitive plastic resin and used it at 100 percent content to injection-mold a recycling bin as good as any on the market.
”Unfortunately, nobody`s buying them. You see, it costs more to reclaim the garbage than it does to supply virgin materials, and unfortunately there`s no mandate to require use of this post-consumer scrap, even where it makes sense to use it.”
