Covanta Commences Metal Recycling System in Virginia

Covanta Energy Corp., a waste management and renewable energy services company, has officially opened a metal recycling system at its energy-from-waste (efw) facility in Fairfax County, Va. The company, headquartered in Morristown, N.J., says the new metals recycling system is the first of its kind in North America. The system has been designed to recover small particles of non-ferrous metal; and the company says the operational commencement represents a milestone for Covanta’s organic growth initiative.

“Improving efficiency and sustainability are key aspects of our culture and as such, we are continuously looking for new ways to recover value from waste and divert materials from landfills,” says Seth Myones, Covanta’s COO. “I’m proud of the way our team recognized the opportunity to recycle additional non-ferrous metal and quickly got this new system up and running.”

In March Covanta announced a strategic alliance with Steinert US Inc. for non-ferrous metal recovery systems. The partnership supports the implementation of non-ferrous systems at Covanta facilities that currently do not have them, as well as enhancing systems such as Covanta’s Fairfax operations.

“We are proud to have achieved one of the highest recycling rates in the state at 47 percent and work hard to continually improve the recovery of recyclable materials,” says Joyce Doughty, director of Fairfax County’s Division of Solid Waste Disposal and Resource Recovery. “The new recycling system at the efw facility complements our recycling initiatives very nicely and is a great example of how energy recovery and robust recycling programs can go hand in hand.”

According to Covanta, last year the company’s 41 efw facilities in North America recovered for recycling more than 400,000 tons of ferrous and more than 15,000 tons of non-ferrous metal. In addition to recovering ferrous and non-ferrous metals, Covanta’s efw facilities convert around 20 million tons of solid waste into 9 million megawatt hours of electricity and create more than 9 billion pounds of steam.