Municipal Recycling

GLR Recycling Solutions, Roseville, Mich., invited its customers and elected officials from throughout southeastern Michigan to help it cut the ribbon on its new $12 million single-stream material recovery facility (MRF).

At a mid-January open house, GLR co-owner Sandy Rosen reflected on the journey the company has taken in the course of 80 years and three generations of leadership. "When my grandfather Henry Rosen started collecting rags and scrap paper in 1927, he didn’t know that someday there would also be aluminum cans and plastic bottles that could be recycled," Rosen remarked at the open house.

Although recovered fiber has remained a mainstay for GLR (formerly Great Lakes Recycling), those other post-consumer commodities also will be harvested at the company’s new MRF in southern Wayne County in metropolitan Detroit. It is the company’s second MRF in the Detroit area, with the other in Roseville in the northern suburbs.

"Having been located in Michigan for more than 80 years, we felt it was important to invest in Michigan," Rosen says.

The company will seek material from throughout Michigan and beyond to bring to the MRF. "The recycling facility will process recyclables from the entire region, including from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Canada," Rosen says.

The new MRF, in New Boston, is a 50,000-square-foot facility outfitted with a Bollegraaf-Lubo sorting and baling system provided by Van Dyk Baler Corp., Stamford, Conn. The system includes a variety of screens, conveyors and sorting stations as well as a TiTech optical sorter to help sort plastic containers and a Bollegraaf HBC 120 baler designed to bale all materials (fiber, plastics and light metals) produced at the new plant.

Rosen thanked his employees, his bank and the equipment providers for helping GLR get through a construction process, which took longer than anticipated. "We ordered all this equipment without identifying a site and had anticipated that the Detroit area would offer a suitable vacant property; boy, were we in for a surprise," he said.

The company then selected a greenfield site that proved to offer barriers to its development before selecting the site in New Boston, which is less than a mile from an interstate highway exit.

GLR’s New Boston facility also includes a truck scale, a large tipping floor and a multi-media room and viewing areas designed to accommodate school classes and other tour groups.

According to Rosen, adding the viewing areas and walkways increased the cost of the facility, but he says GLR believes the space will help communicate the recycling message "so that schools and other groups can help educate future leaders on the importance of recycling to our environment."

Tours of the plant will be available to public groups starting in the spring of 2009. More information on the tour process will be posted soon to www.go-glr.com.

GLR Recycling Solutions has operations in Roseville, New Boston and Flint, Mich., and in North Tonawanda, N.Y. GLR Recycling Solutions is a full-service recycling processor with services ranging from on-site pick of paper, metal, plastics and foam through its commercial division, as well as office paper recycling through its corporate office recycling program and shredding services.

The company also recently announced a partnership with Canada’s GEEP (Global Electric Electronic Processing) to co-manage an electronics recycling facility to be known as GEEP Michigan. (See Page 12 for more information.)