Nulife Opens CRT Leaded Glass Recycling Plant New York

Manchester, UK based Nulife Glass has opened a recycling facility in Dunkirk, New York which will soon begin recycling leaded glass from Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) screens. Nulife said that the facility has been opened by its wholly owned subsidiary, Nulife Glass NY, and follows its successful commissioning in the UK of what it claimed to be the most advanced CRT recycling plant in the world, and the only active industrial scale process to recycle leaded glass The company said that it will recycle the glass using its proprietary furnace technology (See WMW Feature) to extract lead from the glass making the material into a safe reusable material and creating pure lead for sale to the battery industry. The facility is expected to recycle a total of around 200 million pounds (91,000 tonnes) of CRT glass. Why America? According to Nulife, the success of the plant it built in the UK for e-waste recycler, SWEEEP Kuusakoski (pictured above) encouraged it to make its process available for the accumulated mountains of waste television glass in the U.S. Locating within the U.S. means there is now no need to export waste CRT glass, something which is the company said is becoming increasingly difficult as the Federal EPA steps up their oversight of waste exports to prevent toxic waste being dumped in developing nations who are not equipped to deal with it. Simon Greer, the company’s owner and inventor of the furnace told WMW that the following a redesign to the lead outlets, the furnace the company sold to SWEEEP Kuusakoski has operated even better than he had anticipated, and melted the targeted 10 tonnes per day. According to Greer SWEEEP has also had great success in winning new business on the back of capability which the furnace gives it, a situation he expects to see replicated in the U.S. where there are currently huge stockpiles of CRT glass awaiting a solution. While the Dunkirk facility is not yet operational, and is awaiting the delivery of a furnace from the UK, the site is accepting leaded glass, which Greer said has come as a “great relief” to those sat on growing stockpiles of CRT waste. “It seems as though our opening one site is a wave of hope for those who are holding stock with no solution,” Greer told WMW. Bright future The company said that it plans to open new sites and build sufficient CRT glass recycling furnaces to suit the incoming quantity of glass and operate in a supporting role to e-waste recyclers which dismantle televisions and that need a reliable and sustainable downstream outlet for the CRT glass they create. “Now there is no need to landfill CRT glass and we will open strategic sites to minimise on waste haulage which in some cases is currently being shipped half way around the world,” added Greer. Nulife said that plans are already being made for many more sites in the U.S. and other strategic sites in Europe, Asia and New Zealand. Read More Ray of Light for CRT Recycling Cathode Ray Tubes may have disappeared from our shops, but the number entering the waste stream is yet to peak in Europe, while demand for the leaded glass they contain has evaporated. Ben Messenger looks at an award winning technology developed by a small firm in Manchester, England that combines heat and chemistry to extract lead and clean glass. Video Worlds First CRT Lead Recovery Furnace in Operation A video explaining to operation of the 'world's first' furnace recovering both lead and pure glass from the leaded glass of old cathode ray tubes (CRT), has been published by resource campaign group, The Great Recovery. Second CRT Glass Recycling Challenge Issued by ISRI & CEA A technical challenge to identify financially viable, environmentally sound proposals for using recycled cathode ray tube (CRT) glass has been launched by U.S. trade bodies the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).