Engineering Alumnus Leads Innovation in Large Scale Automation Recycling
Alumnus Maarten Eenkema van Dijk, E’14, MS’15, civil and environmental engineering, utilizes the problem-solving and leadership skills gained from his college co-ops to serve as executive vice president of VAN DYK Recycling Solutions, his family’s business that designs, builds, and maintains warehouse-sized recycling machines processing 70 tons of waste per hour across North America.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Rich McKay. Main photo: Maarten Eenkema van Dijk (right), seen with his father, Pieter (center) and brother Florian (left) with one of his family built machines. Courtesy Photo
The ‘Commodore of Recycling’ helps his family business grow
Northeastern University grad helps lead a business that built machines that handle 70 tons an hour of New York City’s recycling, as well as for plants across the nation, Mexico and Canada.
There’s no stopping the seemingly endless stream of old bottles, cans, cardboard, newspaper and plastics that float in on barges from Manhattan to a massive recycling plant along the Upper New York Bay. The refuse gets scooped up by massive claws at the plant’s loading docks into machines that can process 70 tons of rubbish per hour. As the machines run, more rubbish is trucked in from Queens and Brooklyn.
But what if something goes wrong with a gear or motor in those warehouse-sized recycling machines? It turns out Northeastern University alumnus Maarten Eenkema Van Dijk and his team are on call to help fix it pronto.
“You just can’t tell New York City that their garbage won’t get picked up,” said Eenkema van Dijk, 35, the man called the “commodore of recycling” by his family, business associates, and old friends from Northeastern University.
The recycling machines are also designed and built by his family’s Norwalk, Conn.-based company, VAN DYK Recycling Solutions, Founded in 1984 in the U.S. by his father and uncle – Dutch brothers Pieter and Erik Eenkema van Dijk, Maarteen Eenkema van Dijk started working at the company in 2017 as an operations manager. He rose up the ranks at the plant and is now the executive vice president at the company.
The kind of large-scale recycling that the company handles was once done by people sorting the refuse with rakes and shoves, Eenkema van Dijk says. “Now it’s all machines,” he said. The machines are equipped with, among other things, infra-red optical sensors that can tell one type of plastic from another.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News