Linz. At the end of May 2022, the notebooks refurbished by AfB were handed over to Caritas Upper Austria in Linz. Edgar Gratzer, Head of the Training Department of Caritas Upper Austria, accepted the devices at Café Carla:

 

 

“I am pleased that these notebooks have been donated to us for two reasons. Many of our customers hardly have access to such devices. Here they can independently try out, learn and make sense of new applications that don’t work on smartphones. All areas to increase independence. And in my role as environmental management officer for the EMAS-certified St. Elisabeth site, I’m happy to be able to set a nice example here, too: Things that are no longer so serviceable for some are refurbished, and in turn offer great value to others.”

Edgar Gratzer, Caritas Upper Austria, Head of the Training Department

 

The notebooks, which will not be “old hat” for a long time to come, were presented by Jürgen Münzner, AfB Sales Manager for Upper Austria, Andreas Schmidt, AfB Partner Manager for Upper Austria, and Wolfgang Rabl, Head of Sales at Interseroh Austria, which, as a disposal and recycling partner, initiated this project for active waste avoidance together with AfB.

 

This special cooperation to promote sustainability came about through the long-standing partnership between AfB and Interseroh Austria in the area of waste electrical equipment disposal:

 

 

“Interseroh Austria is committed to making a sustainable contribution to socially disadvantaged people. The reprocessing of IT hardware that has already been written off also makes an active contribution to reducing our ‘footprint’ for the next generation. Thanks to AfB and their commitment in Austria.”

Wolfgang Rabl, Interseroh Austria, Head of Sales

The constant exchange between experts from the two companies offered the opportunity to return notebooks that would not have been economically remanufactured under normal circumstances because they were already too old, for example, to the product cycle as part of a sponsored initiative to avoid waste – and to donate them to a good cause on several levels at the same time.

 

From learning to interpreting: the new use of the donated equipment

 

Thus, even during remanufacturing at AfB, the equipment was used by employees to learn and practice technical skills. But their future destination is even more diverse:

 

 

“I am very pleased that AfB is able to support young people with disabilities in particular, who might not otherwise have easy access to notebooks, and that they are thus given access to learning with digital media. It’s a great opportunity to create a basis for these young people to use their strengths to become valuable and important employees in their adult working lives, in companies like AfB, even with an impairment/disability.”

Jürgen Münzner, AfB Sales Manager Upper Austria

 

At Caritas Upper Austria, the (almost again) new devices are used for training and teaching purposes: for training media competence as well as for basic IT training. People with hearing disabilities will be helped by the notebooks in the classroom, with video interpreters plugged in remotely. And they also find a new home in Caritas residential groups in St. Isidor – for Internet research and learning games.

 

Value creation beyond the material

 

The fact that sustainability is also promoted on a social level within the framework of this project through the specific use of the refurbished notebooks is particularly in line with the broad responsibility of which all actors – Caritas, AfB and Interseroh – are aware.

 

AfB – Europe’s largest non-profit IT company

 

AfB GmbH – www.afb-group.at – is Europe’s largest non-profit IT company and creates valuable jobs for people with disabilities by recycling and selling used IT and mobile equipment.

 

Companies and cooperation partners use AfB’s core services by leaving their IT hardware that is no longer needed to AfB at the end of its lifecycle. Old equipment is collected by AfB from companies throughout Austria, inventoried, deleted in a revision and EU-DSGVO compliant manner using Blancco certified, repaired, tested, cleaned and then remarketed with a guarantee of at least 12 months. Alternatively, old equipment is professionally dismantled and disposed of.

 

In this way, a total of over 58,600 IT and mobile devices were handled by AfB in Austria in 2021, moving over 225 tons of equipment.

 

In terms of resource savings from processing and remarketing, this corresponded to, among other things.

 

• 5,300 metric tons of CO2 (equivalents)
• 3,300 tons of iron (equivalents)
• 20,000 megawatt hours of energy
• 38 million liters of water

 

AfB appliances at reasonable prices are particularly appreciated by people from socially weaker income groups, or people for whom the economical use of resources is a special concern. But so do companies, educational institutions, NGOs and non-profit organizations, which benefit from the favorable prices for IT hardware.

 

Interseroh Austria – Resource Optimization for 25 Years

 

Interseroh Austria, operator of a collection and recycling system based in Vienna since 1997, is a specialist for a sustainable circular economy with the corporate focus on licensing of packaging, waste electrical equipment and batteries, machine trading as well as disposal and recycling. For example, in 2021, 9,193 tons of waste electrical equipment and 413 tons of batteries were collected. 72% of end-of-life devices were recycled or reused, and 88% of batteries were recycled.

 

In addition to disposal and recycling services, Interseroh is the exclusive Austrian partner for Sielaff reverse vending machines and deposit systems as well as for Orwak baling presses for the compaction of recyclable materials.

 

With the new Packaging Management and Packaging Design divisions, the challenge is met far at the beginning of the raw material cycle: Packaging and material analyses in our own laboratory as well as individual consulting by Interseroh specialists push the development of product packaging “Made for Recycling” that is characterized by a particularly high degree of recyclability – for responsible use of our resources.

 

 

In addition, Interseroh Austria supports companies of all sizes in the development and implementation of innovative waste prevention projects. Against this background, after many years of successful cooperation with AfB Austria in the recycling of old electrical equipment, site disposal and packaging licensing, the joint initiative was launched to ensure that donated notebooks do not become “electronic waste” but are processed and made usable far beyond their usual period of use.

Vienna. Interseroh Austria has the next milestone to report. After the change at the top of the company to Mag. Christian Gschiel as operationally responsible managing director, we may now inform you about a change of location. Interseroh Austria now also has a new company headquarters in Vienna. We have moved from our long-time location at Ungargasse 33 in the third district to the second district. The company address is therefore as of this date:

 

Interseroh Austria GmbH

 

BIZ ZWEI, Vorgartenstraße 206c

 

1020 Vienna

 

The office space was thus adapted to Interseroh’s continued dynamic growth. Because we have expanded enormously both in terms of our team and in terms of services, product range and customer service in recent months and years and will continue to do so. In the new office premises, all parts of the company have now been brought together again in one location on around 1,000 square meters, which further optimizes both internal cooperation and services for customers. There will also be a dedicated showroom at our new address that will allow digital tours. In addition, there are seminar rooms for various events and training courses.

 

As our team has grown, so have our offerings to customers. In the future, there will be an increased focus on packaging design as well as trading and recycling of secondary raw materials. Added to this are our new climate-neutral tariff in packaging licensing and new products in machine trading. With regard to the latter, in addition to the proven Orwak balers and Avermann press containers, the focus will be even more on Sielaff’s return systems. With the introduction of a deposit on disposable beverage containers made of PET and metal, we expect demand to increase in this area in particular.

 

Managing Director Christian Gschiel comments: “Interseroh Austria would like to position itself even more broadly for existing and new customers with the new company location and the expanded offers. Therefore, we live the closed-loop concept with our team in our daily activities and would like to support this in the future with an additional state-of-the-art showroom and seminar offers. Our declared goal is to set new industry standards and, not least, the prerequisites for this have been created with our new company headquarters, which will be the center of all our activities from now on.”

Berlin/Vienna. OMV, the Vienna-based international integrated oil, gas and chemical company, and ALBA Recycling, a raw materials provider and leader in recycling and waste prevention solutions, announce they are in exclusive discussions to jointly build and operate an innovative sorting facility in Walldürn, Germany, to further sort mixed plastics for chemical recycling. A final investment decision is expected in 2022.

 

ALBA Recycling operates five sorting plants for lightweight packaging in Germany and sorts around one third of Germany’s lightweight packaging waste – over 800,000 t per year. ALBA Recycling thus currently has the largest recycling capacity in Germany and plants with high performance and a high recycling rate.

 

The cooperation ensures the supply of OMV with high-quality sustainable raw materials for chemical recycling by ALBA Recycling to close the loop for plastics. An innovative state-of-the-art sorting facility developed by ALBA Recycling will have the capacity to process over 200,000 tons of mixed waste plastics per year into suitable raw materials for the production of virgin polyolefins. This innovative sorting process enables the further recovery of polyolefins from a waste fraction that currently goes to incineration. This innovative sorting process was tested on an industrial scale, and the product was successfully processed as a feedstock in OMV’s ReOil® pilot plant.

 

Maximilian Grasserbauer, OMV Vice President Plastic to Plastic: “End-of-life plastics have a significant impact on the environment. Reducing this impact while maintaining the usefulness of plastics requires a shift to a more circular plastics system. Chemical recycling such as the ReOil® process is the ideal complement to established mechanical recycling processes. In ALBA we see a promising cooperation partner with many years of expertise in recycling used plastics, and with whom we would like to invest in the future. Into an innovative future that enables a more comprehensive circular economy for plastic waste.”

 

“We are pleased to be able to combine OMV’s sophisticated chemical recycling with our world-leading sorting technology, thereby taking the next step towards a circular economy and a world without waste,” says Dr. Axel Schweitzer, owner of ALBA Recycling. “Chemical recycling is not a competitor to mechanical recycling because mechanical recycling is the most efficient way to deal with mono fractions from the sorting process. However, chemical recycling is the only option for mixed plastic waste such as mixed and multilayer plastics. We urgently need to recycle this material as well to close the loop for our customers. OMV and ALBA Recycling will make mixed plastic waste, which is currently incinerated, an important source of raw materials to produce enough recycled material for sustainable production of goods and packaging.”

 

More than a decade ago, OMV was one of the first companies to develop a technology for the chemical recycling of used plastics. At the Schwechat refinery in Austria, the ReOil® pilot plant, which can process 100 kg of waste plastics into 100 liters of synthetic feedstock per hour, has been in operation since 2018. The pilot plant has been running for a total of 14,500 hours since its commissioning, enabling an improvement of the thermal cracking process and a further expansion of the ReOil® technology. OMV has made the final investment decision for an enlarged demo plant with a capacity of 16,000 tons per year, which is scheduled to come on stream in 2023. OMV’s goal is to build an economically viable large-scale plant by 2026.

 

Background information – OMV Aktiengesellschaft

 

OMV produces and markets oil and gas, as well as chemical products and solution concepts in a responsible manner and develops innovative solutions for a circular economy. With consolidated sales of EUR 36 billion and a workforce of around 22,400 in 2021, OMV is one of Austria’s largest listed industrial companies. In Exploration & Production, OMV has a strong base in Central and Eastern Europe and a balanced international portfolio with Middle East & Africa, North Sea and Asia Pacific as core regions. In 2021, average daily production was 486,000 boe/d with a focus on natural gas production. In Refining & Marketing, OMV operates three refineries in Europe and holds a 15% stake in ADNOC Refining and ADNOC Global Trading, with a total capacity of around 500,000 bbl/d. The company operates around 2,100 service stations in ten European countries. OMV has gas storage facilities in Austria as well as Germany. In 2021, OMV sold 196 TWh of natural gas. In Chemicals & Materials, OMV, through its subsidiary Borealis, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of advanced and circular polyolefin solutions and the European market leader in basic chemicals, plant nutrients and mechanical recycling of plastics. Together with its two major joint ventures – Borouge (with ADNOC, in the UAE and Singapore) and Baystar™ (with TotalEnergies, in the USA), Borealis provides products and services to customers around the world. Sustainability is an integral part of OMV’s corporate strategy. OMV supports the transition to a lower-carbon economy and has set measurable targets for CO2 intensity reduction and the introduction of new energy and petrochemical solutions.