WM, Republic and a city in Virginia announced upgrades and plans for new MRFs. | Ken Wolter/Shutterstock
The mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia, announced a new MRF with artificial intelligence-powered sorting. Meanwhile, Republic Services announced a new facility near St. Louis, Missouri, and WM completed improvements to an MRF in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Portsmouth Mayor Shannon Glover announced the $200 million facility on May 2 during a State of the City address. The facility will use machine learning AI from AMP to identify and sort single-stream recyclables, but the announcement didn’t specify an opening date.
“This facility will revolutionize the way our region handles trash,” Glover said. “The facility will extend the life of our region’s landfills, save our resources and put Portsmouth on the forefront of smart, sustainable innovation in Hampton Roads.”
The project will be the second AI-powered MRF in Portsmouth after Recycling and Disposal Solutions of Virginia installed an AI sorting system at an existing facility in 2023, also with AMP’s equipment.
Republic Services announced plans to open a similar MRF in Bridgeton, Missouri, in 2027, according to a press release. The facility will process 45 tons of recyclables per hour.
“Our investment in this new recycling center reinforces Republic Services’ commitment to circularity, sustainability and the St. Louis community,” Republic Services Area President Andrew Wempe said in a written statement. “It will meet growing demand for recycling throughout Greater St. Louis and help our customers achieve their sustainability goals.”
Construction on the facility is expected to start in early 2026 and finish in 2027.
In Colorado Springs, WM said it completed $5.2 million in improvements earlier this year to increase the facility’s capacity and automation. Upgrades included two new compactors and a new system of conveyors to improve the facility’s automated sorting system.
The improvements have increased the facility’s processing rate to 15 tons an hour, 50% more than before. While the facility previously only processed commercial recycling, this increased capacity will enable the facility to process residential and commercial material, the company said.
The upgrades are part of WM’s broader initiative to build and improve MRFs across North America. The initiative also includes a new MRF planned to open in Denver in 2026.
That project comes as the recycling load is expected to increase across the state due to the extended producer responsibility policy for packaging, which passed in 2022 and is set to go into effect in 2026. The law requires companies in Colorado with paper products or products in packaging to fund an independent program to manage Colorado’s recycling systems.
Andrew Hawthorne is an editorial intern at Resource Recycling and a journalism student at Rutgers University. He can be contacted at [email protected].