Sustainability and recycling are key to success going forward, the agriculture industry and farming are changing. Composting and waste recycling is an industry by itself.

Materials that are leftover from the agriculture process must be sorted in some way, even if the material – inert – is being directly sent to landfill as most landfill sites will not accept some types of material, and often require sorting into categories prior to disposal. Traditionally this has meant that the material is sent to recycling centers resulting in haulage costs, charges to the recycling centers, and then landfill costs themselves for materials that cannot be recycled or reused. Allu is once again one step ahead to help you remove such an issue and change a cost into a profit margin.

The Allu Transformer DL series screening attachments are for compact base machines and suitable for excavators max. 12Tn, loaders 8Tn, tractors, and backhoe loaders.

These compact-sized screening buckets make the perfect attachments for landscaping and agricultural applications. From composting to aerating, topsoil screening to waste and debris processing, all can be carried out on-site. They are truly mobile, offering you the versatility and flexibility to work more efficiently in the most challenging environments.

The Allu technology quite literally transforms the material making operations more productive, more environmentally friendly, and more profitable. With versatility at its very core, the Transformer will process just about anything it encounters. This includes materials including animals’ mortality residuals, topsoil, excavated soil, and contaminated soil. In effect, virtually any material can be crushed, screened, sized, and sorted.

This results in material processing being revolutionized as it will be accomplished with the Transformer converting the base machine (such as a tractor) into a mobile processing plant. By using the machine in this new way, companies will benefit from reduced investment and operating costs, have a smaller carbon footprint, and lower transportation costs, with the material being transformed into a valuable product, thereby producing a profit stream, rather than a cost.

Quality recycled Products

Despite the equipment as a tractor, skid steer, wheel loader, or excavator being available to recycle organic waste, many agricultural businesses do not handle the material processing themselves. They waste the valuable material, or it is simply hauled away to a recycling plant before most of the material is sent to a landfill. This is a serious cost for agricultural business companies and a waste of highly valuable materials.

One such solution to dealing with waste at source is the Allu DL-Series or all other Allu products that can crush soft and brittle material, separate hard unwanted impurities while loading a dump truck or stockpiling system. This makes them ideal for processing organic and even inorganic waste.

Transforming your business

What ensures that the Allu products really stand out from the rest is the way their use helps customers transform their entire operation. The profitability of a business is transformed as materials can be processed already at the site, rather than transported for further processing. This will also reduce outside waste deposits and bring environmental benefits, as waste is separated before transportation.

Business efficiency is further transformed as the loading and processing of materials is now accomplished in one stage resulting in faster, more efficient processing. Essentially the tractor, skid steer, loader, or excavator now becomes a multi-machine that can load and process whilst simultaneously replacing ‘overlapping’ steps at the farm. This eliminates material double handling needs and helps with cost reduction.

The same concept applies to the workforce, as improved utilization and fewer pieces of machinery require fewer people to operate the equipment. The base machine will be effectively transformed into a multi-functional tool that will compost, aerate, screen, crush, and load, in a one-step operation. As part of the digital solution, all Allu units are equipped with a tracking Bluetooth system that connects to the Allu app that can be installed on any mobile device, such as a mobile phone or a tablet.

Source: Allu

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The coronavirus crisis is teaching us much about our social infrastructure that we either didn’t know or took for granted. We are learning, for instance, that our health care system is exactly that – a system that we all rely on, and one that can be overwhelmed by sudden stress.

We are learning that our front-line health care providers – nurses, physicians, first-responders, all manner of hospital and clinic workers – are heroes of the first order who put their well-being at risk to care for the sick and vulnerable. And we are learning that our food-distribution system, of fundamental importance during a crisis, is strong and resilient. Farmers, food processing facilities, food distributors and grocers have stepped up to meet the demands of a worried public facing the uncertainty of sheltering in place.

To be sure, there have been instances of long lines and temporary shortages of certain items, but our food-distribution system is keeping up with demand. Deliveries of goods have been keeping pace, and grocers have been working overtime and hiring new workers to restock shelves.

Many of us are learning something that went mostly unnoticed before: that groceries are as important to our social infrastructure as roads, hospitals and fire stations. We need them to function smoothly to prevent social disruption.

It’s a lesson we need to keep in mind after this crisis passes.

With vigilance and broad public compliance with the safety measures public health experts have put forth, we can hope that the worst of the potential consequences will be averted. There is a long, uncertain road ahead, but this crisis will pass. When that moment comes, policymakers in California can again turn their attention to issues that are important but far less urgent than a global pandemic.

Among them will be the abysmal state of recycling in California that is leading to a resurgence of plastics being discarded into the environment or buried in landfills. It has been accompanied by a decline in redemption rates of beverage containers, despite the 5- or 10-cent California Redemption Value that consumers pay for each beverage container they purchase.

The market for plastic waste plummeted in 2017 after China stopped accepting most shipments. Not only has that made it difficult or impossible to recycle such items as yogurt containers and packaging shells, but it has also dried up revenue for neighborhood recycling centers.

About half of those centers have closed in recent years, and the result has been predictable: recycling rates have fallen. For all containers, the state’s most recent report shows a redemption rate of 76% and trending downward.

A number of ideas have been put forth in the Legislature to reduce plastic waste, including a phasing out of single-use plastic containers, requiring greater use of compostable materials and mandating higher amounts of recycled content in new containers in order to promote a more robust market for plastic waste. All those ideas are ones that should be explored and refined. But one idea that made little sense before seems absolutely unthinkable now – to complicate the mission of grocery stores by requiring them to also serve as recycling centers.

Grocers are in the business of providing food to people. Over the years, of course, that mission has also expanded to include providing necessary household supplies such as cleaning materials and, yes, toilet paper so that they are conveniently available.

Groceries don’t have the people or the space to handle the extra duty of processing containers for recycling, and the last thing anyone should be promoting is the notion of asking consumers to bring used, unsanitary materials into the very places they rely upon to provide a safe, secure food supply.

When we get past this extraordinary public health crisis, taking action to boost recycling in California will remain an important priority. Grocers will do their part in trying to help fashion solutions. But their primary role is now and should always remain to be dependable, resilient suppliers of food and household goods.

Source: California Grocers Association

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CEO Scott Barbour said:

“We manage a precious resource – water. We do it cleanly, effectively. And we do that with highly recycled content.”

In addition to recycled scraps and waste from its own facilities, the company also buys refuse – plastic bottles, drums, other discarded plastic – from the likes of Rumpke, Waste Management and SWACO. The end result is that while around 10% of ADS pipes were made from recycled material a decade ago, now 65% of its products are.

That’s a figure that’s only going to grow.

ADS used more than 400 million pounds of recycled material in its products last year. That will rise to more than 550 million after the $1.08 billion summer acquisition of Connecticut-based Infiltrator Water Technologies.

Though the environmental reasons are important to the company, the business case is a good one as well. Barbour said the materials are less expensive, with savings of between 10% and 15%. There’s less volatility in pricing as well compared with the fresh resin that makes up the rest of the mix. So it’s a better-margin, more predictable product.

The Infiltrator acquisition also is going to grow revenue. The combined companies would have had $1.6 billion in sales in 2019. The deal is a key piece of ADS’ three-year strategic plan introduced last year. Though ADS is a billion-dollar, 5,000-employee business and growing, the industry is a hyper-local one. The company has 48 pipe-making facilities around the U.S., plus distribution yards in Houston, Miami and San Francisco.

Barbour said geographic differences mean different needs. Rain abatement in the northwest U.S. is different than the Midwest, for example. Beyond that, manufacturers face a broad patchwork of construction codes that can very by municipality, county and state.

Erik Schroder, plant manager of ADS’ London facility, also noted that because the company transports pipes, the bulk of its truck space is taken up by air. That makes it more inefficient the further the travel so it’s important to be operating near key markets. Because of this the competition tends to be regional more than national.

The London facility is fairly typical for ADS. It has three production lines and around 70 employees including 15 delivery drivers. It services Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Kentucky and Indianapolis.

Primary customers are road, agriculture and commercial construction — drainage for farm fields, water retention and detention below parking lots, for example. About 10% of business is with contractors who buy through retailers like Lowes and Home Depot.

“It’s a good business, but it’s truck heavy,”

he said.

ADS handles between 70% and 80% of it own distribution.

“We’re a manufacturing, logistics and transportation company,”

Barbour said.

About 32% of the market is plastics, he said. Chief competition is reinforced concrete or steel. The pitch for plastic is that it’s lighter, easier to handle and has fewer joints, which reduces leaks.

Since the business is so geared toward construction, the big growth opportunities are in the busiest building states, or “the crescent,” as Barbour called it. Those are places like Florida, Texas, Arizona, California and Washington, D.C.

“We need to be good in those states,”

he said.

California has been a tough state because of logistics and distribution issues. Texas is good for private business, but the public business is building. With the help of a new lobbyist the company is building its government connections in smaller cities like Amarillo in hopes of building up to larger deals in the state’s larger cities.

“That can be a nice growth engine for us,”

he said.

Beyond that, strength in cities where construction is strong also is important, Barbour said, including places like Columbus, Indianapolis and Minneapolis.

Source: ADS

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