Full Episode: Channel 11's "All About Business TV"

Material Mix/Episode 24: Welcome Spring a Fresh Look at Business 

 

Material Mix Featured on Channel 11's "All About Business" TV

Full episode to air Sunday at 9am

Capital Innovators featured on All About Business TV

All About Business TV Episode 23: Capital Innovators/Start-ups in the City

 

Material Mix Joins Capital Innovators Accelerator

Alli Carmen               acarmen@materialmix.com

It has been a very busy and exciting first week of the Capital Innovators spring 12-week accelerator program. We are working hard on continuing to develop our exchange platform, with an anticipated release date prior to April 2012. So stay tuned! If you would like to get involved in our Beta release, contact us at info@materialmix.com or sign up here.

Below is a family photo of our fellow start up comrades; which include 5 other companies selected from over 250 applications from 4 countries and 19 states. Needless to say, we are extremely honored to be included in this distinguished crop! It is going to be a great year!

Front: Brian Handrigan of Click With Me Now, Brian Slawin of BusyEvent, Judy Sindecuse and Hal Gentry of Capital Innovators, Allison Carmen and Nicholas Akerberg of Material Mix.    Back: Mark Comiso of Click With Me Now, Don Breckenridge of Systematic Revenue, Mike Behr of Click With Me Now, and Mark Sawyier of Bonfyre

Curious about the rest of the Capital Innovators crew? Check 'em out!

Bonfyre is a location-based mobile application exclusively for college students that helps them find what’s hot around campus, keep up with friends and save money. Bonfyre was created by Off Campus Media, a company focused on creating value for college students and highly relevant advertising opportunities for local merchants and national brands. 
BusyEvent is a profitable live event CRM company monetizing some of the 10 million annual face to face transactions at conferences, trade shows and business to business events. They track buyer behavior and present that data as actionable information that multiple stakeholders pay for. 

Click With Me Now makes 1-click web-sharing for consumers possible; with no Cost, no Downloads & no Frustrations. Supporting businesses that connect with consumers online, they provide tools that let their customers instantly invite friends to co-browse with them. Their SaaS-based, platform-independent solution results in richer experiences, greater conversion, and increased sales. 

RollSale  is reducing the need for expensive middlemen in the used car supply chain by providing dealers with a simple, inexpensive, mobile-centric social network for buying and selling inventory. 

Systematic Revenue provides growing businesses with an easy to use and affordable marketing automation software application to consistently follow up with all prospects and customers in a meaningful and relevant way. 

Touring Rock-Tenn MRF

Allison Carmen     acarmen@materialmix.com

St. Louis has a lot of great tours – you could see how beer is made at the Anheuser Busch facility, take a zig-zagging mid-century chic pod-ride to the top of the St. Louis arch, or – my personal favorite – tour the Rock-Tenn Materials Recycling Facility (MRF). 

Jack Czajkowski explains how shredded office 
paper is sorted and baled

It was Friday the thirteenth with frostbite temperatures; but of course that didn’t stop us from trekking ten miles through sleet and snow (OK, we drove) to north Saint Louis to learn a bit more about what happens at the end of the line for single-stream recycling.

It’s a busy time of the season for this facility in particular, Angie Ingenthron of Waste Management explains. Angie is a local champion of waste diversion, and serves as a liaison for local universities for the upcoming Recyclmania competition.  Waste Management has partnered with this particular MRF, which currently processes single stream recycling from many local universities. 

Jack Czajkowski has served as Brokerage Manager at this St. Louis based plant since the Smurfit-Stone days, and is an expert on processing and recycling. He took us through the process; from drop-off, to baling. First, the load must be qualified to ensure that contamination does not exceed 5% (this reminded me of my boyfriend, who NEVER rinses out containers).  A quick rinse makes a huge difference! Next, the single-stream goods are dumped in a conveyor and ratcheted up to an elevated platform where 4 or 5 guys hand-sort the material, removing lower-grade cardboard and sending it down a chute. 

The material then continues on the conveyor up to the second stage, where a powerful generator shakes any broken glass to the bottom, and blows higher grade paper and plastic to the top with a billowy air stream. Higher grade paper such as Leger (print and copy paper) is worth more than say, Cardboard fiber or low-grade Newsprint; so each must be separated out before baling. 

A guy on a fork lift cruises by; honks, and stops. “Jack, if I knew we were having company, I would have cleaned up the place!” he says with a chuckle. Jack explains they do sweep regularly, but of course there are a few bits of paper on the floor here and there – to be expected at a place with so much activity.  Pallet-sized cubes of sorted paper are baled tightly with wire and stacked in tetris-like fashion. Some paper flakes off once and a while - kind of like a good Baklava.

Recycling enthusiasts; Jack Czajkowski, Jim Grzesik, 

Nick Akerberg, Allison Carmen, Benny Lewis

Next, we scale to the top platform and take a look at the custom built balers, which are manufactured in the UK and Holland. These things are large and in-charge, and can bale all kinds of paper AND plastic. By this time, I could barely feel my toes, so I was relieved to head back to the office and debrief. All in all, I wouldn’t spend my Friday afternoon any other way. 

For more information on Rock-Tenn’s sustainability initiatives, click here. To hear more about how your company can get involved in recycling, send us an email at info@materialmix.com