Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Raw Materials Company Inc. (RMC) is a recycling-based manufacturing company that transforms waste alkaline batteries into fertilizer that can increase the yield of the average acre of corn by 20%. Founded in 2009 and located in Port Colborne, RMC has developed a proprietary, world-class alkaline battery recycling technology which is considered to be the international gold standard as it is the only process capable of recycling 100% of a spent alkaline cell and manufacturing resalable commodities from the recaptured material, thereby upcycling all components. Since its founding, RMC has recycled over 15,000,000 lbs of spent alkaline batteries and, from the recaptured materials, manufactured approximately 9,750,000 lbs of zinc-manganese powder (sold into the agriculture industry for use in fertilizer), 3 million lbs of steel (sold to steel mills) and 2,250,000 lbs of paper and plastic which is used to generate more energy than the RMC recycling facility consumes. These commodities are sold domestically and internationally, generally to the US. The success of RMC thus far has garnered the company several awards, including the Niagara Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Solid Waste Association of North America Award for Best Technology and Recycling Council of Ontario Platinum award for two consecutive years. In addition to this, James Ewles, President of Raw Materials Company was recently recognized as one of the Canadians who has made great contributions to sustainable development or clean capitalism in Canada by Clean50 Awards Program. This project will remove two major bottlenecks in the RMC process by devising a clean and efficient method to eliminate garbage and other waste from the sorting stream of household batteries as well as determining methods that would eliminate any risk of fire or shorting of post-sorting non-alkaline batteries.