News

The best part of this job is getting out from behind the desk and meeting people who are doing great work.

I once again had that chance yesterday with a visit to Precision AirConvey. The Newark company designs, makes and markets machines that handle manufacturing waste. Remember those hole-punched removable strips that used to feed paper through dot-matrix printers? They're still used commercially, and handling that scrap is a pricey and messy prospect. Precision AirConvey has answers.

According to CEO Tom Embley, Precision AirConvey is always working on new products. "We're engineers that happen to be in the waste-handling business," he said.

The company's latest project is a densifier for plastic bags. The machine readies the plastic waste for reprocessing, recycling or storage. Right now, the company is capable of cramming a thousand bags into a brick about the size of two toasters (top). The engineers are shooting to go even further, and when they do, the product will hit the market. "We're trying to get four times more dense," Embley said. "I'm very confident we can do it."

What happens to the bricks? One possibility is mixing the reconstituted plastic with saw dust to make building materials. "That's making that plastic bag pretty sustainable," Embley said.

Precision AirConvey is looking for the local public's help with this project. They need bags to use in their lab. Lots of them. If you're a business, school or other group looking for a recycling project, contact marketing and sales coordinator Tracey Southerland at (302) 999-8000 or gogreen@airconvey.com.