Hewlett Packard and Lavergne recycle PET bottles with state-of-the-art
technology from Aicha
It is still early in the morning, but Maria has already covered a long distance. On her back she carries a basket full of bottles. PET bottles that mean cash for her. Maria is a waste collector in Haiti. She is one of many single mothers living with their children in extreme poverty who have found a way to earn money through this work.
It all began eight years ago: Edouard Carrie, a young scion of a textile dynasty from Haiti, came to the United States to study and lived with a family that operates a waste sorting facility. As Haiti — once known for its beautiful beaches — is now at risk of being overwhelmed by waste, he developed the idea of having bottles collected in Haiti so they could then be recycled. With a baling press as a farewell gift, Edouard Carrie returned to his home country and immediately put his idea into practice. The young man looked for sponsors to support his concept. He found them in Lavergne Group, which recycles plastic bottles together with HP to manufacture new printer cartridges from them.
STF Group supplies washing line to Haiti
STF Group, headquartered in Aicha vorm Wald, plays a major role in enabling this form of recycling. In the summer of last year, STF Group received an order from Lavergne Group to build a washing line for PET and HDPE. The system has now been delivered to Haiti and is being installed and commissioned on site. “Delivery already took place in January of this year,” reports Dirk F. Leiber, Sales Director at STF Maschinen- und Anlagenbau GmbH. “But COVID-19 then slowed us down somewhat, and we had to wait with the installation of the system,” he continues. Because COVID-19 still entails numerous restrictions, STF Group has chosen a new way to implement the project. “We have often demonstrated pioneering spirit and taken paths that no one before us had taken, and so we are starting up the system with a remote installation,” says Maximilian Söllner, CEO of STF Recycling Division. This means that the assembly of the individual system components is coordinated and monitored via a permanent video link between Aicha vorm Wald and Haiti. “We can follow every single step of the installation, almost as if we were on site,” says Dirk F. Leiber. In addition to this video transmission, a daily video conference takes place between STF Group, Lavergne in Canada, HP in the USA and, of course, the executing engineers and workers from Ecssa in Haiti. “An important exchange that keeps us continuously up to date and leads to optimizations during installation,” says the Sales Director.
In eight weeks, the washing line is expected to be ready to the point where the first bottles that Maria collects every day can be fed into the recycling loop. The system can shred an impressive 1.2 million PET bottles per day; the material is then washed at 85 degrees Celsius in the hot washing system. “A hot washing system has the advantage that the labels can be removed very effectively from the plastic of the bottle and that the resulting plastic flakes become odor-neutral,” explains Dirk F. Leiber. HP then manufactures printer cartridges from the recycled and further processed plastic.
And Maria? She receives cash for every bottle she collects. Money that allows her to secure her family’s livelihood, money that allows her to send her children to school, and money that gives them a future and helps protect the environment!Photo: STF GroupPhoto: STF GroupPhoto: Lavergne/HPPhoto: Lavergne/HPPhoto: Lavergne/HPPhoto: Lavergne/HPPhoto: Lavergne/HPPhoto: Lavergne/HP