Published: January 10, 2025 Updated: by Jennifer Bogs
Stokkete/Shutterstock
This article appeared in the January 2025 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Across all consumer goods categories, the U.S. is striving to limit packaging waste and to slow the flow of landfill contributions. Regulators and environmentalists know that time is running out to combat climate change and that moving from a linear to circular model is one of the most effective strategies for preserving materials, reducing resource consumption and decreasing production-related emissions. Yet recycling rates in the U.S. continue to fall short of their potential — largely due to a lack of access and understanding for consumers. This raises the question: If we could simply improve consumer recycling habits of consumers for even one type of packaging, how much could we shift future recycling rates and landfill volumes?
Aluminum as a clear avenue
The beverage can serves as a package with unique opportunity for moving the needle, given its market-ready path toward a greater circular economy. While most modern consumers know that the beverage can is a recyclable item, many do not understand just how impactful that recyclability is in terms of the bigger picture. Used beverage cans are able to be recycled from an empty can to a new can on the shelf in as few as 60 days — a remarkable turnaround that not only saves precious materials from landfill but also saves more than 90% of the energy required in production using virgin materials.
Aluminum cans are also one of the highest-valued formats in the recycling stream given the fact that they can be recycled an infinite number of times without loss of properties like strength and durability. In fact, the Can Manufacturers Institute says that the profit from aluminum beverage cans effectively enables the entire recycling system to operate — typically accounting for more than 33% of the revenue at an average MRF, more than any other single material commodity.
Unfortunately, the majority of consumers are unaware of the importance of UBCs for recycling systems and are not always committed to making responsible choices for material disposal, leaving a tremendous opportunity gap for greater collection.
Creating care and commitment within consumers
While there are numerous ways to make beverage can recycling easier for consumers, there is no action without buy-in. Consumers must feel connected to the products they are using as well as
personally responsible for their choices in order to develop new, more productive habits.
With this in mind, driving consumer education about the damaging effects of landfill waste and resource consumption on the future of our planet, as well as the benefits of properly disposing of key packaging formats like the beverage can, helps to drive more mindful behavior and long-term stewardship.
When a consumer knows that the way they interact with just one beverage can plays a tangible role in a potential environmental outcome, they are more apt to do their part.
Often this education can be done in tandem with localized events where can collection is active and accessible. Some examples include:
Sponsoring contests at sporting events: Various minor league teams around the U.S. have received sponsorship support from manufacturers and beverage brands to hold a collection contest of all used beverage packaging in stadium and arena stands, incentivizing responsible disposal and recycling on-site while providing longer-term education and reminders to all attendees along the way.
Hosting competitions at schools: CMI has led a One Million Can Challenge with elementary schools in key regions of the U.S. to drive awareness of the importance of UBC collection not only with families and communities but with the younger generation, who can develop impactful habits early on.
Creating greater accessibility in high-consumption areas: Metal packaging industry initiatives like Every Can Counts continue to meet consumers where they are, placing recycling ambassadors at local festivals, community parks, academic institutions and other high-traffic areas where passersby can be taught to be more thoughtful about recycling in relation to their daily activities and lifestyles.
Strength in numbers
Ultimately, when it comes to increasing national recycling rates, it is imperative we remember that small actions can create significant impact. Focusing on one substrate, and partnering with one school or one neighborhood to drive more awareness, can be part of a much larger patchwork of efforts happening across the U.S. With the mindset that no one initiative is too minor, we stand a chance to advance the circular economy and foster a much healthier environment long-term.
Jennifer Bogs is a global director of sustainability at Crown overseeing the strategy and implementation of the company’s sustainability program at approximately 400 locations in 40 countries while leading a global team of sustainability professionals. She has 20-plus years’ experience in the environmental field and 9-plus years of experience in sustainability.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Resource Recycling, Inc. If you have a subject you wish to cover in an op-ed, please send a short proposal to [email protected] for consideration.
This article appeared in the January 2025 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Designing packaging for recyclability is an important part of building a circular economy. For plastics, structures that are designed with consideration for existing recycling methods can contribute to higher-
quality recyclate and help strengthen the supply of post-consumer recycled material in the future. Although it involves a thorough understanding of downstream collection and recycling processes, designing for recyclability really begins with upstream producers.
Beyond performance and aesthetics, examining packaging from a recycler’s point of view involves considering how the package could be collected, sorted and processed. Because mechanical recycling is the most widely available recycling method today, many companies are moving toward mono-material packaging designs that could enable higher-yield PCR feedstock bales in the future. However, mono-material structures must be able to meet the necessary barrier and sealing requirements of incumbent structures to be a viable alternative to mixed-material laminates and films. Balancing these performance requirements, equipment capabilities and consumer expectations of how the package should function can prove quite difficult for brand owners.
How can the packaging industry advance technology innovations that fulfill all of these specifications? Through their studies exploring how to build a circular economy, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has identified external input and breaking down silos as two key ingredients for a successful upstream innovation process. Brand owners know the type of product and experience they want to deliver to consumers. Suppliers understand the capabilities and limitations of different materials. Bringing various areas of expertise together through cross-value-chain collaboration streamlines and accelerates the commercialization of packaging solutions that deliver the desired experience for consumers while considering the post-use cycle of the product.
The growing availability of high-density biaxially oriented polyethylene is one example that illustrates how resin suppliers, film manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers worked together to bring a new PE material to market that enables new types of mono-material packaging. Working with biaxial film manufacturers like Inteplast, Nova Chemicals expanded BOPE-HD availability and capacity by running trials and collaborating closely with the experts in biaxial film production. These relationships helped refine the BOPE-HD formulation to meet converter and brand owner requirements. “Every step of the value chain has to work together in order to make sure that we end up with a product that meets the needs of the market,” said Latricia Fry, market and business development manager at Inteplast.
Market demands
The development of BOPE-HD began with an increased interest in mono-material PE solutions from brand owners. Motivated by NGOs like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, emerging extended producer responsibility legislation and consumer preferences, many companies have made sustainability commitments related to making packaging recyclable and incorporating PCR materials.
PE is suitable for a wide variety of packaging applications due to its moisture barrier properties. While HDPE has established recycling streams and is one of the most recycled types of plastics, the majority of flexible packaging films end up as waste. Store drop-off programs are currently the only consumer recycling program for plastic films on a large scale, and they only accept a portion of PE flexible packaging. GreenBlue, the organization behind the How2Recycle labeling system, reports that only 36% of program members’ flexible packaging qualifies for store drop-off recycling, while the remaining 64% is not yet accepted.
In light of its versatility and its developing options for recycling, PE is a common choice for mono-material packaging designs. When Inteplast began exploring BOPE, they started with linear low-density
PE but discovered that it could not meet all of their customers’ needs. The goal of designing mono-material structures is to replace multi-material PET and PE laminates. These materials demonstrate high stiffness and heat resistance, and LLDPE could not meet the same types of processing requirements. The market was demanding an HDPE solution.
Product development
Nova Chemicals started down a new path altogether when they began developing their BOPE-HD resin for tenter frame lines, as the process requires a different formula than blown PE film. To create the resin that could run on commercial tenter frame lines, including lines designed for biaxially oriented polypropylene, they had to create a completely new formula that would not slow down or limit production. As all operators work on maximizing line speed, maintaining productivity for the new HDPE material was essential, though working with HDPE in this process is technically challenging. To develop a functional resin that could be widely adopted, Nova formed strategic relationships with film manufacturers.
Nova and Inteplast embarked on a journey to test resin formulations and production processes for the BOPE-HD resin. The Nova team conducted trials on Inteplast’s tenter frame lines. Nova and Inteplast team members attended OEM demonstrations together to better understand how the resins could run on existing and new equipment. At Nova’s Centre for Performance Applications in Calgary, Inteplast and other brand owners tested films on converting equipment and shared feedback to improve the functionality of the resin.
Benefits of collaboration
Developing a new product requires lots of testing and many different iterations. The exchange of information and an open dialogue between multiple industry players throughout the process aligns everyone’s objectives, helping teams pursue the right research and modifications. “Any time a packaging design changes, there will never be a drop-in solution that solves everyone’s problems,” Fry explained. “Adjustments will always need to be made, and sharing feedback during the development stage ensures that we are all following the right path and narrowing in on our process.”
For mono-material structures, new films need to work within existing production capabilities to be competitive and profitable. Collaboration enables new developments that account for the manufacturing, processing and performance needs throughout the entire packaging value chain. “Collaboration really is the only way we’re going to be able to solve the demand for circularity when it comes to flexible films,” said Fry.
The industry must focus on creating accessible mono-material packaging solutions that provide an alternative to non-recyclable, mixed-material films. As the world comes together to increase plastic recycling and reduce plastic waste, it is important to start these system-level changes with existing opportunities like packaging designed for store drop-off programs and optimized for mechanical recycling processes. Downstream solutions alone will not be able to tackle plastic without upstream innovation supported by diverse teams and collaborative thinking.
Brant Wunderlich has extensive experience in the packaging industry and is currently the team leader for application development and circular economy at Nova Chemicals, a leading producer of polyethylene resin that strives to solve industry challenges and circular solutions for our customers and organizations across the value chain.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Resource Recycling, Inc. If you have a subject you wish to cover in an op-ed, please send a short proposal to [email protected] for consideration.
Published: January 10, 2025 Updated: by Keith Loria
The expansion of the New York City Department of Sanitation’s Staten Island Compost Facility and addition of new equipment increased the facility’s capacity to turn food waste into compost by nearly 2,000%. | Courtesy of Michael Appleton, New York City Mayoral Photography Office.
This article appeared in the January 2025 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
As communities grapple with the challenges of material management and environmental preservation, organic collection has become a crucial strategy to reduce landfill overflow, enrich soil health and promote a sustainable future in both the country’s largest city and one of its smallest communities.
Holden Village, an isolated retreat center in Washington’s North Cascades Mountains with fewer than 200 residents, and New York City, home to more than 8 million, have both launched programs for food scraps and other organics that reflect their unique environments and needs, community leaders said.
After years of trying to get an organics collection program underway in New York, the passage of the Zero Waste Act, introduced by Council Member Shahana Hanif and approved by Mayor Eric Adams last year, made residential curbside organics collection mandatory for all residents.
“Local Law 85 of 2023, which I’m proud to have authored, is a groundbreaking initiative (that) will divert organic waste from landfills, reduce harmful emissions, enrich our soil, power our homes and creates a cleaner, greener, rat-resistant sanitation system,” Hanif said in an email. “The climate crisis is no longer a distant threat — it’s here, flooding our streets, polluting our air, scorching our summers and sparking fires in our urban forests. Now is the time for bold, decisive action, and mandatory composting is a critical part of that solution.”
The city’s Department of Sanitation finished rolling out the program on Oct. 6, with residents of Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island required to separate their food scraps into a separate bin from their trash and recycling for curbside collection. Service had already been implemented for Queens and Brooklyn in the last two years.
With all five boroughs of New York now participating, New York now has the nation’s largest residential curbside organics program. Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for the sanitation department, said previous attempts included obstacles like bin requirements and signup requirements that discouraged participation.
“The Adams Administration set out to eliminate those obstacles and launched the nation’s largest and easiest curbside composting program,” he wrote in an email. “There’s no signup required, no requirement to use a specific bin and no confusion about pickup dates. Residents simply put their material out on their recycling day in a sealed bin, with a liner if they choose, and we pick it up and turn it into compost or renewable energy.”
Holden Village, a retreat and tourist community rooted in the Lutheran tradition, has been recycling and composting since the 1970s but wanted a larger, more reliable compost process, said Nathan McClure, who currently serves as Holden’s “garbologist.” The community last year upgraded to an enclosed, aerated bunker composting system from Green Mountain Technologies, partly in response to high disposal costs. All of its food scraps go into compost for local landscaping and ecosystem restoration.
“Holden Village has clearly demonstrated that if there is the will, there is a way to make recycling happen,” Rik Langendoen, director of environmental services at Green Mountain, said in a written statement. “They are a great role model for every community.”
Van Calvez, Green Mountain Technologies’ composting systems engineer who designed the system at Holden Village, has worked with both small communities and large municipal-built systems for cities. Whether looking at Holden Village or New York’s process, each approaches composting in the same way, only the size is different.
“The biological processes for facilitating a hot, aerobic composting process are the same regardless of scale,” he said. “However, the equipment and infrastructure needed varies considerably. The type of technology that is needed for a small community scale is entirely different than what is needed at a bigger municipal scale.”
Sanitation workers collect compost in Queens. | Courtesy New York City Department of Sanitation.
Size matters
New York studied other successful programs in North America and learned that one of the keys to success was an early emphasis on yard trimmings, as residents already separate them from trash.
“This is one of the reasons we launched curbside composting in the early fall … when many residents are getting rid of leaves,” Gragnani said. “Of course, we accept all food and yard waste, and we continue to remind New Yorkers, ‘if you cook it or grow it, you can throw it.’”
While participation is mandatory, the department is focused on education at first and will begin issuing summonses for noncompliance in April. Fines for buildings with one to eight units start at $25 for the first offense, increase to $50 for the second offense, and rise to $100 for the third and any subsequent infractions. Meanwhile, larger buildings face fines starting at $100 for the first violation, escalating thereafter.
“Some material collected is composted while some goes to anaerobic digesters, but all compostable material is put to beneficial use,” Gragnani said. “Biogas produced in the digestion process and used to heat local homes and businesses takes the place of methane that would otherwise be fracked. This is a beneficial use for this material, far, far better than transporting it to landfill, where it would release methane into the atmosphere.”
The Staten Island Compost facility has produced nearly 42 million pounds of finished compost per year over the last several years. Historically, about 60% of the finished compost is sold to landscapers and 40% is given away to community groups, parks, residents and others, including free givebacks at the facility and in Brooklyn.
“We have several new contracts that, in light of the program’s recent citywide expansion, are diversifying where we send organic material collected and preventing overburdening one neighborhood,” Gragnani said. “And in light of the recent expansion, we are drastically increasing the number of districts whose material becomes composted while decreasing the number of districts sending material to anaerobic digesters.”
The program, though still facing some challenges from residents who are new to organics sorting, has been performing well since implementation.
In fiscal year 2024, which concluded on June 30, New York City collected around 130,000 tons of organic material, according to the sanitation department. This marked an increase of over 23% compared to the previous year, attributed mostly to the organics collected through the curbside program in Brooklyn and Queens. That number is expected to reach over 200,000 tons next year with the program now running in all five boroughs.
“We are fully dedicated to educating the community about this issue,” Gragnani said. “We remain optimistic and have every reason to believe that we’ll continue to see growth in the numbers.”
Small but mighty
In Holden Village’s dining room, where all of the community meals are served, any food left on plate is scraped into big trashcans along with any kitchen scraps. They’re then weighed and dumped into the composting system.
Originally, compost was put into pits dug into the ground, but being in a wilderness setting, that attracted bears and other animals. Three-walled bins also drew wildlife. The village began working with Green Mountain in 2009, McClure said.
“We had gotten a couple of their older systems called Earth Tubs, which are augers with a lid over it that spins around, so it was like a massive immersion blender to chop up the food waste and also fluff it up and aerate it as it goes along,” he said.
That system was in place for about 15 years, and last May the two partnered again on a newer, bigger system using an in-vessel system of three aerated bunkers, comprising 18 cubic yards of space for food and wood fiber collected within the village. It was installed inside a utility shop to withstand the heavy winter snowfall.
“With this new system having much more space, we are able to get everything in and give it the time it needs to cook, to fully break down before we take it out,” McClure said.
The isolated Holden Village community diverts most of its waste from landfills, according to community leadership. | Courtesy of Hannah Johnson
The aeration system, which operates on a timer, optimizes oxygen levels for effective microbial activity, and staff monitor temperature and moisture regularly. Once filled, each bunker processes the compost for eight to ten weeks with minimal need for mixing. The finished compost is then distributed within the village and used for local restoration projects, including mine remediation and areas affected by forest fires.
Holden Village also has a comprehensive recycling program, with separate storage containers for electronics, metal, plastic, cardboard and paper that are then shipped down to various centers on the eastern side of the Cascades. McClure estimates that the community diverts more than 90% of its solid waste away from landfills.
“It takes a lot of hands-on work and a lot of community involvement with all of the people here,” said McClure, who is part of a staff of 150 that shrinks to around 60 in the winter. “In 2023, 35,000 pounds of food waste was collected.”
McClure keeps tabs on other organics programs in the U.S., and although smaller than most cities and communities, he finds ideas and tips to be more efficient with composting and recycling.
He credits Calvez with helping to fine-tune the program and utilize whatever the community has on hand.
“The reason why this system works for them, in my opinion, is that it’s custom-built, designed specifically for this application,” Calvez said. “This was really a collaborative design process based on their needs.”
This article appeared in the December 2024 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
As the demand for plastic packaging continues to grow because of its benefits for protecting food and lightweighting, consumer preferences and government legislation are driving brand owners to rethink the way plastic packaging products are used and recycled. To address concerns about waste, pollution and human and environmental health, packaging producers are searching for ways to transition to a more plastic circular economy. In a circular model of consumption, one of the primary goals is to divert plastic waste from landfills and keep materials in the economy in high-value applications as long as possible.
In addition to redesigning packaging for recyclability, many companies are setting ambitious goals to increase the use of post-consumer recycled materials in their packaging by 2030. Some organizations are also investing in recycling projects to process post-consumer materials. Despite this momentum, some of the world’s largest brands are already revising their post-consumer resin targets due to difficulties sourcing high-quality recycled plastic feedstock.
The current waste collection and plastic processing infrastructure is not equipped to meet the purity requirements of feedstock for many types of in-demand packaging solutions such as food-contact materials. According to The Recycling Partnership, material recovery facilities vary greatly in their ability to process collected recyclables into outbound commodities, and they estimate that only 79% of post-consumer plastic materials received are actually sorted and processed. McKinsey reports that even the bales that are sorted and sold often consist of multiple types of plastics and non-plastic contaminants and residues, making them unqualified for most types of mechanical recycling and even some chemical recycling processes.
As overall recycling rates in the U.S. stagnate and demand for PCR increases, recyclers are resorting to importing plastic scrap. ICIS reports that 2023 was the first year that the U.S. was a net importer of scrap plastic, bringing in more than 63,000 tons of polyethylene to supplement their PCR capacity. Without an adequate supply of recycled feedstock, it will be impossible for brands to achieve their PCR packaging goals and comply with PCR material mandates such as those enacted in California, Washington, New Jersey and Maine.
Creating high-quality feedstock is a complex opportunity that involves the entire value chain. Regulatory and processing requirements demand materials that can be traced to their origin to ensure safe, high-performing recycled plastics that can be used in food packaging and other high-performing plastic products. Although building the supply chain for recycled feedstock requires many moving parts, with continued collaboration, creativity and investment, the packaging industry can build an economically viable circular economy that supports both plastic recycling and the use of recycled materials.
Complicating factors
There are multiple factors that make plastic recycling complex. For example, there are multiple types of plastic that are further modified by colorants, processing aids, antioxidants and other additives. These substances, along with the recycling and reforming process, impact the possible end uses of the recycled materials. Mixtures of multiple types of plastics can also affect the functionality and structural integrity of the recycled product.
For food-contact PCR materials, recyclers need to establish a chain of custody that includes the source and uses of the material to track additives and chemical contaminants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration states that recycled food-contact plastic must meet the same specifications as virgin plastic. The organization reviews each proposed recycling process designed for food-
contact applications. If the process is expected to produce acceptable food-grade materials, a letter of non-objection is issued.
Although not a formal approval or a legally binding document, obtaining an LNO is a best practice for recyclers looking to create food-contact materials. To submit an LNO, recyclers must describe their recycling process, provide surrogate contaminant testing results and explain the intended use of the recycled plastic. Even within post-consumer food packaging, different additives can limit end uses, such as plastics approved only for low-temperature applications or specific food types.
Changing perspectives
Because plastics are so diverse and pure feedstock is so critical, producers, retailers and consumers must all play a part in improving recycling rates and practices. Public education on the value of recycled plastic and the legitimacy of plastic recycling is needed to motivate people to take action. For consumers, that could involve encouraging participation in a variety of recycling options, such as sorting materials in bins for curbside pickup or bringing plastic materials to store drop-off locations.
On the commercial side, businesses must be willing to commit to increased tracking and recordkeeping to validate the chain of custody, including documenting the manufacturers of plastic they use, what it was used to package and what it came in contact with during transportation and storage. Everyone from consumers to businesses has an important role to play in plastics circularity.
Investing in infrastructure
In addition to education on plastic recycling, governments and corporations must work together to increase access to recycling programs. Investing in the recycling infrastructure includes increasing capacity with new facilities and may also involve the development of secondary sortation facilities. Known as plastics recovery facilities, these secondary operations have advanced sorting capabilities that can separate mixed materials that MRFs cannot. Increasing the supply of high-quality PCR bales requires the development of collection networks and validation protocols to create traceable sources of post-consumer plastics. This process should involve the exploration of untapped resources of recyclable materials, such as large users of food packaging like event venues and sports stadiums.
The plastic industry must work together to improve the quality and availability of recycled plastic feedstock. Research into plastics circularity operations estimates that a third of the $50 billion needed to scale up plastic recycling by 2030 should go to feedstock sourcing and preparation. With several extended producer responsibility programs and PCR material mandates in process and many more proposed, the time is now for investing in the changes needed to advance recycling technology and enable high quality PCR materials. Partnerships, supply agreements and joint ventures throughout the plastic value chain are necessary to drive the widescale, system-level change needed to make PCR material mandates achievable and make meaningful progress toward a circular economy.
Alan Schrob is director of mechanical recycling at Nova Chemicals. He spent 20 of his 30 years in the plastics industry encouraging circularity in a variety of roles, including business development, marketing and the rigid and performance films markets.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Resource Recycling, Inc. If you have a subject you wish to cover in an op-ed, please send a short proposal to [email protected] for consideration.
Published: January 9, 2025 Updated: by Dan Holtmeyer
Evgenii Panov/Shutterstock.
This article appeared in the December 2024 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Even without the major hurricanes or before the election season, 2024 was a year of change for the recycling sector, with new players coming to the fore, old players building out their footprints and an ever-clearer view of the industry’s shortfalls and successes.
Nonprofits, communities and multibillion-dollar corporations alike consolidated, partnered and tested new ways to recycle materials and to explain the recycling system to its users. Extended producer responsibility, the right to repair and other policy ideas advanced on some fronts but not others. And on a global scale, companies and nations grappled with the reality of omnipresent plastics.
Like re-reading an old diary, we’re spending a few pages looking back at some of the year’s biggest news and trends to help make sense of where everything landed — and to get a glimpse of what might come next.
Unmasking fire hazards
The year began with a January report from the National Waste and Recycling Association and RRS estimating that more than 5,000 fires occur annually at recycling facilities, many likely linked to wayward lithium-ion batteries inside recycling streams that can incinerate everything around them when crushed or damaged.
“Basically they’re like a flower spinner you’d see on the Fourth of July, but they’re heavier and they’re burning at about 700-plus degrees,” said Matt Tracy, site superintendent for the Metro South transfer station outside Portland, Oregon, during a February forum hosted by the Association of Oregon Recyclers.
The study found that the rate of catastrophic losses rose by 41% over the last five years, and the cost to insure facilities has followed suit, rising to as much as 50 times previous costs.
Facilities like Tracy’s across the country have adopted several tactics for dealing with and preventing these fires, including burying the batteries in CellBlockEX, a dry medium made from recycled glass and specifically designed to extinguish or suppress lithium-ion battery fires, and enlisting FireRover, the remote fire monitoring and suppression system.
This year the federal government awarded hundreds of millions of dollars toward lithium-ion battery processing operations to boost their capacity. And multiple technology companies have also turned to the X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum, aiming to pierce through MRFs’ incoming boxes and bottles to flag misplaced batteries and other hazards before they catch fire.
A young company called BinIt in January announced that it had received $6.4 million in seed financing for its imaging system combining cameras, X-rays and artificial intelligence, for instance. In the spring, Call2Recycle and Electronic Distributors International installed a similar battery-sorting system in Ontario, one of four of its type in the world. And Battery Detection Solutions spoke with Resource Recycling in November about its own X-ray scanner, which could eventually be adapted from MRFs to collection trucks.
“The only way to eliminate the chance of a fire is to make sure the batteries can’t get in,” said Rich Cisek, Battery Detection Solutions’ founder and CEO. “Even if some magic battery comes out tomorrow where people are like, ‘Hey, look, it doesn’t catch on fire anymore when you shred it,’ we’re still going to have a decade and a half of risk around the stuff.”
State policy changes
Minnesota in May became the fifth U.S. state to pass extended producer responsibility for packaging, joining the ranks of California, Colorado, Maine and Oregon. It created a framework for manufacturers to contribute to increased recycling of their products over time and passed along party lines, with Democrats in favor.
“The burden of managing this ever-growing deluge of packaging waste currently falls on local governments — and taxpayers,” State Rep. Sydney Jordan, who sponsored the original bill, said in a written statement at the time. “Today’s bill takes steps to ensure the producers of this waste are paying their fair share.”
The success followed several months of negotiation and collaboration among a wide variety of industry stakeholders, including nonprofit MRF Eureka Recycling and Ameripen, an industry group representing packaging producers that hadn’t supported such a policy until Minnesota’s final version.
Other narrower EPR policies also passed this year, including for textiles in California and electric vehicle batteries in New Jersey, both firsts in the U.S. And work continued on previously passed EPR bills, with California, Colorado, Maine and others deciding annual recycling targets, producer responsibility organizations and other details. EPR attempts were unsuccessful, meanwhile, in still other states, including Michigan and New York.
On the e-scrap side, Oregon and Colorado both passed right-to-repair legislation last spring, require electronics manufacturers to allow independent repair shops and consumers access to the parts, tools and documentation needed to fix devices. While Oregon and Colorado were the fourth and fifth states to do so, respectively, they were the first to ban the use of software to ensure a device will only operate with specific individual parts, or parts pairing, which can interfere with third-party repairs or with device functionality afterward.
On the international stage
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution assembled global leaders multiple times this year to hash out a global treaty on the subject, with the fifth meeting set for Nov. 25 through Dec. 1 in South Korea.
INC-5 would be the last chance the delegates have to meet the deadline of having treaty text ready to present to a Conference of Parties by the end of 2024, a finish line that was set in a March 2022 vote. Delegates have broadly agreed on the need for mandates on product design, composition, performance and EPR, though there have been disputes over production caps and other areas.
Next year will also herald wide-ranging impacts from another global agreement, the Basel Convention, which controls the international trade of a wide array of electronics and their contents, such as plastics. The U.S. is one of the few countries that is not party to the convention, meaning that starting Jan. 1, U.S. e-scrap companies will no longer be able to export their output to virtually any overseas buyers. It’s a huge change that IT asset disposition companies have spent the year figuring out how to handle.
“It really has become the de facto agreement for the circular economy,” said Paul Hagen, an attorney with Beveridge & Diamond and a longtime Basel expert, speaking during a panel at the ISRI2024 conference in Las Vegas in April.
Aiming high, and adjusting
Disappointment was another theme of 2024, with Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, PepsiCo and other major consumer goods makers announcing they’d fall short of their 2025 goals for recycled content usage and other measures.
Post-consumer resin production needs to increase as much as fivefold to meet those goals, according to a report this summer from RaboResearch, part of the Dutch financial services company Rabobank.
Bloomberg’s latest edition of its Circular Economy Company Ranking, an annual publication tracking corporate sustainability pledges, in October found widespread “difficulties in sourcing sustainable feedstock and materials, and a lack of infrastructure for sorting and recycling — all against the backdrop of rising costs.”
As a result, brands likely will shift their focus more broadly to carbon emissions targets rather than putting plastic usage under the microscope, RaboResearch wrote. And Bloomberg noted that, in lieu of adequate mechanical recycling capacity, many firms are banking on chemical recycling.
Chemical recycling questions
Chemical recycling goes beyond conventional mechanical recycling, breaking post-consumer plastics down into their basic molecular components for remanufacture, as opposed to physically chopping them into flakes for melting.
The technology started the year on a defensive footing, with The Recycling Partnership in February calling for more evidence of its benefits to people and the environment. Maine passed legislation classifying it as solid waste processing rather than recycling in March, and the National Recycling Coalition proposed a similar draft policy in the summer.
“Recycling has always evolved and changed,” and chemical recycling is just another innovation “responding to the reality that some … plastics in the current packaging stream are difficult or unable to be recycled mechanically,” TRP said in a position statement on its website. “Change is good, but it needs to be planet-positive, transparent, and measurable.”
Petrochemical companies have nonetheless poured hundreds of millions of dollars into chemical recycling technologies, calling it a game-changer that can solve the plastic problem. Eastman early this year announced plans to build its second chemical recycling facility in Longview, Texas, for example, with up to $375 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, though the election has raised questions over that support.
Energy giant ExxonMobil recently announced it would triple its U.S. chemical recycling capacity in Texas. Shortly after that announcement, Cyclyx, which supplies plastic scrap to mechanical recyclers as well as chemical recyclers such as ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell, announced it would proceed with its second plastic processing center in Texas, too.
Skepticism around chemical recycling’s promise continues to dog the industry, however. A November report from Zero Waste Europe, based in Belgium, called it “partial recycling” and said successful commercialization “will require huge financial and regulatory support and time.”
A clearer view going forward
The past year brought a slew of studies and reports that, taken together, helped fill in the map of the recycling landscape across the country.
Three-fourths of recyclables are lost at the household level, even though 73% of all U.S. households have recycling access, according to a January study from TRP that estimated the residential recycling rate is 21%. The “State of Recycling: Present and Future of Residential Recycling in the U.S” report pointed to a lack of access to recycling services and a lack of education and communication as major culprits.
TRP and GreenBlue in September followed up with new online data highlighting recycling program acceptance rates for 50 different material types across the country, using local recycling program data that represents nearly all of the U.S. population. They aim to update the U.S. Community Recycling Program Acceptance Data twice yearly.
As Resource Recycling reported in January, a study from Eunomia Research and Consulting also found that nine of the 10 states with the highest recycling rates have deposit return systems. Deposit states account for 27% of the U.S. population, according to the study, but provide more than half of all aluminum cans, glass bottles and PET bottles recycled in the country. Other studies this year found deposit recycling rates are falling slightly in those states as well, which some observers said meant the systems need bigger deposits and other changes.
Among several material-specific studies, a revised methodology from the American Forest & Paper Association put the 2023 recycling rate for paper at 65-69% and cardboard at 71-76%. That’s significantly lower than previous AF&PA reports and more in line with estimates from Bloomberg Intelligence and Circular Ventures, which disputed AF&PA’s figures for years — including in these pages.
Marissa Heffernan, Antoinette Smith and Colin Staub contributed to this report.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House will likely bring far-reaching changes to the recycling system, experts say. | Dan Holtmeyer/Resource Recycling Inc.
This article appeared in the December 2024 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
The clear victory of Republicans across the branches of U.S. government could affect the municipal recycling world in a number of ways. It’s early, but some signs from the past — and some recent analysis from industry observers — offer a glimpse of what’s to come.
In the Nov. 5 general election, President-elect Donald Trump received 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226, Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate with 53 seats to Democrats’ 47, and Republicans have secured a majority of U.S. House seats. The trifecta gives the party broad power to enact its policies.
For recycling stakeholders, some of the impacts will be general: Tariffs, tax cuts and other economic policies would undoubtedly filter down to affect the recycling sector, as with virtually every other industry. Those policies could be similar to those proposed and enacted during Trump’s 2017-2021 administration.
For instance, Trump has said he’ll impose tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, the country’s three largest trading partners. That policy hearkens back to the Trump administration’s previous trade war with China, which affected recycling in the form of increased costs for machinery components and basic facility needs like baling wire, on top of the tariffs’ broader impact on the economy.
President Joseph Biden later kept and expanded some of those tariffs, but not on the level of the measures Trump has proposed. Industry groups such as the Recycled Materials Association already shared an analysis suggesting the new tariffs Trump has described would “negatively impact the U.S. economy.” And retailers like Walmart have said publicly that prices will likely go up with new tariffs, according to Forbes and other outlets.
Meanwhile, the tax cuts of 2017 were lauded at the time by industry groups representing recycling interests, and among new tax proposals, the Trump administration is expected to extend the cuts, some of which were set to end at the end of 2025.
In some ways, the lack of federal recycling policy could insulate the plastics and chemicals sector from major policy impacts.
“U.S. states have been the traditional leaders in passing policies to improve recycling and reduce plastic pollution,” said Kate Bailey, chief policy officer with the Association of Plastic Recyclers, in a written statement. “We expect that to continue and to be strong for many years to come because polls show there is widespread support to improve recycling and reduce plastic waste. APR’s policy focus has been at the state level, and we will continue to prioritize working with state legislatures to improve recycling collection and increase the use of recycled plastics in place of virgin feedstocks.”
APR owns Resource Recycling, Inc., publisher of this magazine.
“Spending public funds for the sake of sustainability, rather than efficiency, is most likely in the past,” said Bailey Robin, cofounder and CEO of recycled commodity trading platform Matium. He added that it would be important to see how tariffs may affect the industry.
Similarly, in a presentation at Pack Expo before the election, Rebecca Marquez, director of custom research at PMMI: Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, said the trade association did not anticipate any federal packaging extended producer responsibility legislation because the U.S. is too fragmented, so it will likely remain state responsibilities.
The Plastics Industry Association — along with the Recycled Materials Association, Radius Recycling, Eastman and Dow — was among more than 600 business leaders that signed a Nov. 5 letter from the National Association of Manufacturers pledging to work with whomever was elected.
Meanwhile, the Aluminum Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Beverage Association, The Recycling Partnership, World Wildlife Fund and dozens of other industry and advocacy organizations on Nov. 19 urged Congress to pass two bipartisan recycling bills before the end of the year — before the new federal government arrives, though the groups didn’t note this explicitly.
The Recycling Infrastructure Accessibility Act and the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act would enhance federal recycling and composting data and provide more grants, particularly to underserved areas. They’ve easily passed the narrowly Democratic Senate but not the narrowly Republican House.
“More recycling is good both for the planet and for the broader manufacturing economy,” the organizations wrote to Congressional leaders in both chambers. “Together, these bipartisan bills would advance the nation’s recycling capabilities, support a robust and circular economy, and help secure critical domestic supply chains.”
Industry stakeholders may be anticipating less interest in recycling-related legislation in the upcoming legislative landscape, said David Biderman, a waste and recycling consultant and former trade association president.
“The clock is running out on the 118th Congress, plus the results of the November elections will usher in an administration far less concerned about recycling than the Biden Administration,” Biderman said. “The Republican-led House and Senate that will convene in January 2025 will have many higher priorities than this legislation.”
Potential EPA impacts
Recycling policy is largely set at the state and local level, and programs are mostly overseen by municipal governments. But the federal government does plenty of work collecting data and facilitating conversations to advance materials recovery.
Those efforts are always subject to change when there are leadership transitions in Washington. The early efforts of the prior Trump administration to significantly reduce the EPA’s budget offer clues about what could be coming down the line.
Back in early 2017, the Trump administration proposed cutting EPA’s budget by 31%, prompting fears among recycling stakeholders that the agency’s longstanding Sustainable Materials Management work could grind to a halt. Recycling lobbyists sought to defend the programs, noting both their economic and environmental benefits. In the end, after working its way through the U.S. House and Senate — both of which were Republican-controlled — the budget was revised to remove many of the drastic cuts.
One longtime recycling industry stakeholder told Resource Recycling that the state-level emphasis could become even more pronounced amid the new political environment.
“Should residential recycling not be a priority at the federal level, one way it can prosper is for states to grab the bull by the horn and legislate it through mandates such as EPR or container deposit laws,” said Myles Cohen, founder of Circular Ventures and previously president of Pratt Recycling.
Trump announced he plans to nominate former Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York as EPA administrator. Zeldin served in the House of Representatives from 2015 through 2023 and has been an outspoken Trump ally over the years.
“Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies,” Trump wrote in a statement on social media, noting that Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
Zeldin voted in line with the League of Conservation Voters 14% of the time, according to the organization, indicating relatively low support for pro-environment measures. A couple of exceptions were the votes he cast to increase regulation on PFAS.
Grants in jeopardy
Although Trump has not specified plans regarding recycling, Trump said in a September speech to the Economic Club of New York that he would “rescind all unspent funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has helped greenlight such projects as Eastman’s second U.S. chemical recycling plant in Longview, Texas.
“Eastman is already under award contract with the DOE for our project in Texas,” said spokesperson Kristin Parker. “We are working together closely and don’t believe the change in White House leadership will impact our award.”
In March, the project was awarded up to $375 million in funding and was to begin negotiations with the U.S. Department of Energy. During negotiations, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which administers the Industrial Demonstrations program that selected Eastman, and the recipient finalize the project scope and the proposed budget. “The complexity of the project, the selectee’s responses, and OCED’s reviews will all impact the negotiation timeline,” according to the office’s website.
“When it comes to the reliability of the grants, well, we’re in a new political world, so I’m not going to predict what happens,” Eastman CEO Mark Costa said in a Nov. 21 investor call. Eastman’s investments help work toward reshoring U.S. production and building a local economy, which is “in line with the current agenda of the incoming administration.”
Costa added that programs funded by the IRA and the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which incentivizes U.S. manufacturing especially for semiconductor chips, “are incredibly important for our national security.”
In an August letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, 18 Republican lawmakers said, “As Members of the House Republican Conference, we write to urge you to prioritize business and market certainty as you consider efforts that repeal or reform the Inflation Reduction Act.”
They continued: “Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing. A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”
Treaties could be tabled
Recycling stakeholders should anticipate the U.S. pulling back from involvement in global regulatory efforts, according to law firm Beveridge & Diamond.
“Prepare for the withdrawal of engagement on international environmental and waste treaties, as the Trump administration prioritizes domestic development, tariffs (and potential restrictions on imported goods), and increased exports of domestic natural resources,” the firm recently wrote. “This includes the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and implications to ongoing international conversations around global emissions reductions and the regulation of plastics.”
While the analysis didn’t mention the treaty by name, the implications would likely extend to the Basel Convention, which regulates the movement of hazardous waste materials around the world, and in recent years has expanded to cover shipments of mixed scrap plastic. The convention will expand its regulation of end-of-life electronics beginning next year.
The U.S. remains one of the only non-party countries to the Basel Convention, and that fact has increasingly shut U.S. companies out of the global trade of recycled materials. Non-party countries are prohibited from trading materials that are regulated under the convention with party countries.
The Beveridge & Diamond analysis touched on the U.N.’s in-development global treaty on plastics, which the U.S. has engaged with. Notably, the U.S. this year pivoted on key controversial components on the draft treaty to support plastics production limits. The abrupt shift from previous opposition to such measures garnered a strong reaction from the plastics industry and cautious optimism from environmental groups.
In a Nov. 15 media briefing held by Break Free From Plastics, Sarah Martik with the Center for Coalfield Justice, said members of the U.S. delegation “confirmed they were not supporting” such caps anymore and “instead will rely on market signals and individual countries’ signals to set these caps and timelines for us.”
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., one industry association says the federal shift could affect the landscape of voluntary industry commitments as well. In a statement, the U.S. Plastics Pact said its work to achieve recycling targets occurs “independent of shifting federal policies.” But the group noted “critical gaps remain at the federal level that limit our ability to fully achieve these targets, regardless of the administration in power.”
The Pact added it doesn’t anticipate building up federal plastics recycling policies will be a priority for the next administration, but it emphasized that “plastics recycling is a bipartisan issue, and we remain committed to advancing the conversation within the supply chain.”
Marissa Heffernan and Dan Holtmeyer contributed to this story.
Published: November 20, 2024 Updated: by Keith Loria
Courtesy of Park La Brea
This article appeared in the November 2024 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
With higher population densities, space constraints and the constant arrival of new tenants, multifamily housing often presents one of the biggest chasms for residential recycling and composting programs to cross. Park La Brea, a 4,255-unit community in the Miracle Mile District of Los Angeles, has bridged the gap for 12,000 residents spread across 49 buildings thanks to continual outreach and collaboration, several officials said.
“We’re an 80-year-old property, but that doesn’t mean we have to operate like we’re 80 years old, and for me, this is very much a big environmental push,” said Aryn Thomez, vice president of property management for Prime Residential, which owns the complex. “We wanted to do right by the environment and also stay ahead of the legislative curve.”
Thomez noted the key to a successful composting program in a multifamily property — especially one as large as this — is a collaborative approach between management, the on-site team, the hauler, composter and others. In Park La Brea’s case, Valet Living collects the compost at residents’ doors six days a week, EcoSafe provides 2.5-gallon liners to residents, and final organics collection is done by Athens Services, which also collects recyclables and trash.
“Maintaining cohesive relationships between multiple departments and consistently engaging residents is crucial for an effective organics recycling program,” said Jennifer Duet, sales strategy manager for Athens. “If any one entity tries to do it on their own, it’s more likely to fail, so it’s better to have everyone on board.”
Bringing in the residents
Recycling had been available at the complex for more than a decade. But when the program began in 2022, residents unsurprisingly met it with something of a mixed response.
“Before we even launched it, we had a very comprehensive communication plan to put it out there to our residents and discuss the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ and not make it seem like we were forcing it down their throats,” Thomez said. “We spent a lot of time to show them how this benefits them and the value it creates.”
It took time for people to adapt, but with two years behind it, Park La Brea is seeing a much better adoption and engagement to the composting program. About half of residents are signed up for composting through the valet service; there’s also a green bin in the basement for those who don’t want to wait for pickup or aren’t signed up.
“Especially as new residents come in, you’re starting to see a demographic where this is very important to them,” Thomez said. “We are continuing to see good increases in adoption quarter over quarter.”
As of January 2022, all residents in California, including those living in apartment complexes, have been required to compost organic waste properly. Exactly a decade earlier, recycling was made mandatory. It’s up to the property owners to supply and allow access to an adequate number and size of containers with the correct labels or container colors for each. Park La Brea goes a step further with its services and also stands out for being the largest complex in California to compost.
In the beginning, Athens developed educational materials, including videos, signage and startup kits, to help both property managers and tenants understand what’s accepted in the composting bins and how best to succeed in the program.
“Along with our signage and residential handouts, the Athens Multifamily Manual is designed for property managers as an easy-to-use guide, which includes a step-by-step checklist, communication templates, lease language and participation surveys, making it a comprehensive resource to support an effective program,” said Jessica Aldridge, director of sustainability and zero waste for Athens.
Originally, for recycling and composting for those living in the complex’s 18 13-story towers, things needed to be brought down to the basement. That’s why Valet Living and EcoSafe were brought in, to make it easier for residents to adhere to the composting plan.
“A lot of properties will make it an optional service if residents want it, but the way Athens did it was to give everyone the opportunity to do it just by stopping by to get a bin, or by going door to door to make sure people knew how it worked,” said Gary Bilbro, director of U.S. sales for EcoSafe. “They worked hard to ensure the highest level of participation possible.”
To make it as easy as possible for residents, Valet Living picks up six days a week, instructing people to leave their compost bags outside their doors each evening. The valet service also ensures the appropriate bags get to the bins and picks out obvious contaminants.
New bags are kept in the laundry room, so residents can simply restock whenever they need. There’s also a green bin in the basement for those who don’t want to wait for pickup.
“Park La Brea’s success stems from management’s proactive approach in equipping tenants with the necessary tools to fully engage in the program,” Duet said. “By providing kitchen-pail bag dispensers, valet service for the towers and routine organics barrel cleaning for the garden apartments, the company has made recycling and composting more convenient and accessible, creating a smoother and more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.”
Richard Risemberg, a Park La Brea resident for the past two years, moved in right after the Valet Living service began and said the composting program has been working well.
“They provide this service, it’s $35 a month, and pick up the general garbage and separate the recyclables, and then provide us a separate little can for the compost, and provide the compostable bags to line it with,” he said, adding he trusts the system. “I think the city keeps watch on things and so do think things are getting composted correctly when they take things down to the master bins.”
Risemberg is a part-time landscaping gardener and has used city-supplied compost and mulch on numerous products, so he knows stuff is getting back out the way it’s supposed to be.
“Once in a while, they do run out of the bags, but that’s the only issue I have encountered,” he said. “Overall, I believe this is working and it’s a very good thing for all.”
Other residents have not been as impressed and have complained to management, and even some of their local politicians, about the problems they see.
For instance, seven-year resident Michele Palermo, a writer and executive producer who wrote the composting episode for Martha Stewart Living about eight years ago, opted out of Park La Brea’s compost program because she believed it wasn’t working.
“I don’t feel like it was vetted properly, and it amounts to people leaving really stinky food outside their door in the evening when people are coming home from work, and I think it’s an invitation for vermin,” she said. “Plus, if you go around the complex in the morning, all of the trash seems to be piled together — trash, recycling and composting. It’s kind of a mockery, and it’s bothersome because it’s not doing anything for the environment.”
Others complain that when they go to empty their compost into the larger collection container themselves, often they are full of items that don’t belong. Resident Stephen Manning has been recycling for more than half his life, and though he was originally excited about the composting program, he’s abandoned it because he heard from a driver making the pickups that many times they end up putting the items removed in the regular landfill anyway because of this problem.
Both Prime Residential and Athens Services disputed this account, and other residents talked favorably about the program on the Park La Brea Facebook page. In a complex this large, there will always be people who aren’t following proper protocol.
“Residents are holding us accountable now, which is great; we want people to get involved and help us if they see something that doesn’t belong in the compost bin,” Thomez said. “Some people make this much more complicated than it needs to be. We just all need to hold each other accountable and we will get there.”
Law of the Land
With California’s SB 1383 now in effect with an aim to reduce organic waste disposal by 75% by next year, properties are required to provide tenants with clear, annual communication and easily accessible, clearly marked containers that show what’s acceptable for recycling and composting.
“Continuous education and outreach from both property management and Athens are critical to driving behavior change, increasing participation and reducing contamination, while also reducing confusion about what belongs in the organics container,” Aldridge said. “Regular reminders keep tenants informed and on track with proper recycling and composting practices.”
Park La Brea goes above and beyond the law, such as by holding an annual Earth Day event where they go over the particulars of the program and provide further tips for composting correctly.
Overall, the complex’s experience demonstrates it’s not just about a given property being “good” or “bad” at recycling and composting, those in the industry say — it often comes down to access to services, getting property managers on board and providing ongoing outreach and communication with tenants.
“Implementing food scraps collection at a multifamily complex may seem challenging, but with the right tools and strong partnerships, we can successfully divert household food waste from landfills and channel it toward more environmentally beneficial uses,” Aldridge said.
For those looking to install a similar program in a multifamily complex, Thomez noted it starts by just “cutting the cord” and going all-in.
“Your residents will follow suit; if they see it’s important to you, it will be important to them,” she said. “And if you share with your residents the ‘why,’ it makes it a much more palatable and easy conversation, and you will see adoption become easier.”
Keith Loria is a freelance writer and can be contacted at [email protected].
Published: November 26, 2024 Updated: by Dan Holtmeyer
Speakers from Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon shared lessons from their work to grow end markets for recyclable materials at the 2024 Resource Recycling Conference. | Dan Holtmeyer/Resource Recycling
Finding end markets for recyclable materials requires both building connections with existing businesses and community organizations and helping new ideas take root, several recycling officials said during a 2024 Resource Recycling Conference panel. Continue Reading
Published: November 20, 2024 Updated: by Maiju Helin
Courtesy of Neste
This article appeared in the November 2024 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
With slight differences across regions, some 30-40% of global plastics demand comes from packaging production. Low cost and functional properties make plastics an intriguing packaging solution. Yet it comes at a price from a climate perspective: With 90% of global plastics being made from fossil resources, our appetite for wrapping things in plastics takes a toll on the environment. In theory, plastics are well-suited for recycling, but there are various hurdles to turn this theory into practice at global scale, including the need to collect and sort, the limits of existing recycling technologies when it comes to impure, multi-material or layered materials, and demanding and sensitive plastic applications.
Considering the highly valued properties plastics offer and the limited availability in many cases of alternatives at scale, there is a wish to continue using them. Yet the question will be how can we make plastics production, use and waste management more sustainable. In parallel to recycling, do we have options to move from fossil-based to non-fossil based solutions?
I am convinced that there is reason for hope.
If it can be recycled, it should be recycled
Our priority should be to recycle whatever can be recycled. On the one hand, existing mechanical recycling has to be expanded. Whenever mechanical recycling can be done, it should be done. However, the aforementioned limitations of mechanical recycling lead to the need for new recycling technologies such as chemical recycling. Thus, whenever mechanical recycling is not feasible, for example due to waste streams being too mixed or impure — or the final products being too demanding quality-wise — chemical recycling can close the gap. A lot is happening in this regard.
At Neste, we are ourselves currently investing in chemical recycling capabilities at our refinery in Finland, focusing on turning liquefied waste plastic into high-quality raw material for new plastics, but other companies are also pushing new recycling technologies. Chances are good that this will enable us to increase recycling of plastics including plastic packaging in the future. But a question will remain: Will recycling be enough? Unfortunately not.
Demand for plastics and packaging is increasing at global scale. Aside from that, collection, sorting and recycling aren’t perfect processes. They come with material losses. Thus, even at a recycling rate of 100% (and we are currently only at some 10% globally!), we wouldn’t be able to meet the demand for new plastics just through recycling. Meeting the demand will require us to tap into other (renewable) material pools — and one of these is biomass.
Biogenic carbon is available in large quantities as a more sustainable feedstock
Plastics made from bio-based materials aren’t new, and there is a broad range of different approaches and technologies to turn biomass into polymers. They all share one basic concept and a common advantage, though: using biogenic carbon instead of fossil carbon, and as a result reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the lifecycle of plastics.
So let’s focus on the route of using bio-based waste and residues to achieve that goal, as this is also what we at Neste are experts on. Initially, we used these materials — for example, used cooking oil or residues from vegetable oil production — to produce fuels like renewable diesel or sustainable aviation fuel. We still do so, but the renewable hydrocarbon products our refineries produce can also be used to replace fossil naphtha or propane in the production of plastics. In fact, bio-based waste and residue oils and fats can be used to produce a one-to-one replacement for fossil plastics feedstock that can also be used in a blend with fossil feedstock. The plastics and chemicals produced that way are just the same as those made from conventional fossil raw materials, be it common polypropylene or polyethylene, PET or similar.
This is why we call it a drop-in solution: same performance, same characteristics, different raw material, different carbon footprint. The difference in the carbon footprint can be quite significant. Replacing fossil feedstock with bio-based feedstock may see GHG emissions plummet by more than 85% over the plastics’ lifecycle.
The question of scalability and availability
Plastics made with bio-based materials are not a vision but a reality already today. Neste alone — and we are not the only ones active in this field — has a production capacity for renewable products of 6 million tons, set to grow to 7.5 million tons within the next three years. Other providers are increasing their capacities as well, so there are good chances that bio-based materials can contribute to the defossilization of plastics, and thus plastic packaging, at industrial scale.
While production capacities are one thing, the required raw materials are another. The amount of commonly used waste and residue oils and fats is finite. Experts predict that the global availability of such resources could exceed 44 million tons annually from 2030 onwards. Considering the current global plastics production is somewhere around 440 million tons, this limited supply highlights a significant gap. Furthermore, it’s important to acknowledge that these oils and fats are not solely designated for plastics production; they are also utilized in manufacturing fuels and other products, emphasizing the need to explore alternative solutions. This means that further renewable carbon pools will be required. Research and development efforts are looking at various options for that, including algae, lignocellulosics or so-called novel vegetable oils, which are vegetable oils that do not compete with food and animal feed production and feature regenerative agricultural concepts. Aside from these bio-based options, a long-term alternative is Power-to-X, which converts CO2 and green hydrogen into hydrocarbons.
The time is now to pave the way for defossilization
The next years will be decisive to enable a future for fossil-free plastics and plastics packaging. New recycling solutions like chemical recycling are in a commercialization phase, and now is the time to ramp them up. While already available in large volumes, bio-based materials need to be incorporated at a broader scale throughout plastics production. These will be decisive factors to ensure that alternative solutions, on top of mechanical recycling, can play their role in defossilizing the industry in the long-term. I am confident it can be done.
Maiju Helin is head of market development for polymers and chemicals at Neste. Previously, she was head of sustainability and regulatory transformation and of stakeholder management for Neste’s Renewable Polymers and Chemicals business. Prior to Neste, Maiju worked at UPM Biofuels in various roles.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Resource Recycling, Inc. If you have a subject you wish to cover in an op-ed, please send a short proposal to [email protected] for consideration.
Published: November 20, 2024 Updated: by Dan Holtmeyer
24K-Production/Shutterstock
This article appeared in the November 2024 issue of Resource Recycling.Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Tire recycling, by and large, means chopping up tires and doing one of two things with the pieces: using them as-is, such as in mulch or artificial turf pellets, or burning them for fuel. But these traditional markets haven’t been keeping pace with new tire generation, according to the latest data from the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association, an industry advocacy group. And researchers, public officials and others across the country are working to push tire recycling in new directions, including into the same roads those tires once traveled.
More than 3.8 million tons of used tires were processed into usable products in the U.S. in 2023, a 79% diversion rate, according to the association’s biennial End-of-Life Tire Management Report, the newest version of which was released in October. The figure was an uptick from 71% two years prior but was also the exception topping off a decade of decline from the peak of 96% in 2013, according to the association’s previous data.
John Sheerin, the organization’s senior director of end-of-life tire programs, said the bump was likely from temporary factors. The dip in miles driven at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, meant a dip in used-up tires to manage, and higher natural gas prices resulting from Russia’s war on Ukraine made tire-derived fuel more appealing for furnaces, paper mills and similar facilities.
Barring these blips, U.S. tire consumption rises ever upward, Sheerin said, and the tide is against carbon-emitting fuels like TDF and the coal it often supplements. The problem requires development of end markets like rubber-modified asphalt, an association priority that has been gradually drawing more support at the state and federal level.
“We have a ways to go,” Sheerin said. Still, “a lot of things are going in the right direction, and there’s a lot of energy in the field right now.”
Street-level work
Used tires are of course a universal issue, often the biggest class of material collected by weight for the local programs that accept them. States from Alabama to California devote millions of dollars to grants and other programs for tire management, like the $2 million awarded by West Virginia to 22 businesses and local governments early this year. Connecticut in 2023 passed the country’s first statewide extended producer responsibility law for tires, which state officials expect to go into practice next year.
In Tennessee, state officials have taken deliberate steps to grow the used-tire supply chain, said Chris Pianta, an environmental program manager for the Department of Environment and Conservation’s Office of Sustainable Practices.
Since 2015, a small fee on new vehicles has gone into the Tire Environmental Act Program, which awards yearly grants for a mixture of private and public organizations. To build options and lower transportation costs, the first several years’ grants focused on increasing the number of local tire processors, Pianta said. The state has since gone from just one processor to half a dozen.
“I think we’re definitely in a better spot than we were nine years ago,” he said, noting that the grants over their history have contributed more than $10 million to 30-plus projects that diverted 7.6 million tires. “Hopefully we’re starting to make a dent.”
One such processor was Memphis Tire Recyclers, which started in late 2021 after its founders saw an opportunity in addressing hoarded and illegally dumped tires around the city, said Corteney Mack, its chief business officer and co-owner.
Memphis Tire received more than $460,000 from the state grant program in 2022 to buy equipment and facility upgrades, in some cases years earlier than the owners originally planned. The business now has three locations and customers buying all of the crumb rubber, tire-derived aggregate and tire-derived fuel it can make.
“It definitely helped take our business to new heights quicker than we anticipated,” Mack said.
Now Tennessee’s grant program has diversified into more, smaller recipients with projects that directly use scrap tire products, Pianta said. The bulk of this year’s $1.6 million in grants went to tire-rubber trails at state parks and other public areas, for example. Another $147,000 went to a Memphis nonprofit called the Binghampton Development Corporation to install bicycle lane barriers along 6 miles of city streets.
The BDC works to build job skills and work experience for communities in need, such as those with histories of substance abuse or with the criminal justice system, said Andy Kizzee, director of the BDC business hub. The organization has been around for two decades, but over just the past few years it has partnered with the city of Memphis, local professionals and others to recycle a variety of challenging materials. The push all began about three years ago with the confluence of two community problems.
“Memphis has the second-most pedestrian and bicycle deaths in the country, and we’ve got a huge illegal dumping problem,” Kizzee said. So a local urban planner, Laura Murray, partnered with a local industrial artist, Tad Pierson, and with the BDC to try to help both problems at once by converting dumped tires into barriers shaped like camelbacks, upright panels or three-leafed clovers. The barriers are bolted directly to the pavement and alert drivers if they start crossing the line.
Courtesy of Binghampton Development Corporation
Grants from the state tire program, the nonprofit People for Bikes and elsewhere funded a 1-mile pilot in 2022, and now the project is ready for another leap that’ll start in January, Kizzee said. And it will reach beyond dumped tires to make a bigger dent in the tire issue.
“We’ll be sourcing those from tire shops — small mom-and-pop tire shops that wouldn’t necessarily have a contract with a hauler or tire processor,” he said.
Into the asphalt recipe
Tennessee’s approach has also touched on a relatively small but growing trend toward rubber-modified asphalt, a type of pavement that incorporates finely ground tire rubber as an ingredient. The resulting mixture can extend road lifespans, reduce repair costs over time and bring other benefits, according to a state-of-knowledge report released in 2021 by the tire manufacturers association, the University of Missouri and The Ray, a nonprofit pushing for more sustainable transportation.
The technology has been the subject of testing in multiple states, including on several hundred miles of roads in Alabama, Georgia and Michigan. The University of Tennessee-Knoxville received a state grant of about $350,000 in 2023 for similar research.
A small sliver of old tires, about 3%, was used for asphalt applications in 2023, according to the manufacturers association report released in October. But the nation’s highways and roads represent a massive possible end market for the hundreds of millions of used tires generated every year, said Baoshan Huang, a professor in UTK’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who’s overseeing the tire research project.
“The biggest potential application is to put it into asphalt pavement,” he said. “Our society, our community, does have a need to utilize this waste tire rubber, and also there are technologies that can use it more effectively.”
UTK is partnering with the state Department of Transportation to test the asphalt on sections of roads, developing mixtures and experimenting with such details as how much to de-vulcanize, or essentially cook, the rubber to get the best results.
It’s a common topic of research across the country, since every state sets its own pavement specifications and has its own climates and other concerns, said Sheerin with the manufacturers association.
“You can’t just throw some rubber in there and say it’s good,” he said. “They want to see work on the ground in their state that has lasted for some time.”
Sheerin reiterated the many potential benefits to rubber-modified asphalt, including its durability and its ability to be recycled multiple times as roads are resurfaced. The Tire Recycling Foundation, which works in concert with the association, received $3.8 million from the U.S. EPA in July as part of a round of grants supporting low-carbon manufacturing. The money is meant to help develop robust environmental product declarations that show environmental impacts across the life of a product, which could help spur more widespread adoption of the technology.
“At present it’s a relatively small market,” Sheerin said, “and it needs to grow substantially.”
Street-level work
