PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2016

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 19 PET planet insider Vol. 17 No. 04/16 www.petpla.net opportunities in all the challenges: “We hope that the residents of the city take full advantage of the opportunity to learn more about recycling and how it can affect the environment. Continuing to educate citizens will be vital for long term success.” For the company that is very well positioned in bottle-to-bot- tle recycling, the efforts to manage the crisis have brought some positive rewards. General Motors, the biggest employer in “vehicle city” Flint until the 1980s, supports the recycling efforts from afar: for the new project, Schupan recycles the bottles col- lected in Flint into flakes, which are then further processed into air filtration components for GM in Montreal. Outlook The big questions now however are: when will people be able to use their tap water again for all their daily needs, and how much longer they will have to rely on bottled water? For the moment these questions remain unanswered. Flint Director of Utili- ties Michael Glasgow states that the time it will take for scale to accumulate in Flint’s pipes, will depend on the amount of water usage and the existing con- dition of the pipes. Meanwhile, the scandal of the lead contaminated drinking water is spreading throughout the USA. As the newspaper “USA Today” reports, referring to its own research, around six million US citizens are affected by lead values, which are above the limit values recommended by the EPA. All 50 states are affected. www.cityofflint.com www.flintwaterstudy.org www.schupan.com www.usatoday.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis Mobile water distribution site set up by Schupan Recycling (photo: Schupan Recycling) MATERIAL / RECYCLING 19 Schupan Recycling invited Michigan State Univer- sity athletes to help distribute water and collect recycling (photo: Schupan Recycling) SDWHQWV UHVHDUFKHUV DQG WHFKQLFLDQV LQVWDOOHG SODQWV EUDQFKHV ZRUOGZLGH ,I ZH KDGQêW JRQH VR IDU ZH ZRXOGQêW EH VR QHDU <RXU IXWXUH VHHQ IURP QHDU