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.

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.

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.

This article appeared in the December 2024 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

Hundreds of recycling program managers, advocates and other experts gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, in mid-November to share successes and lessons from across the country during the 2024 Resource Recycling Conference.

Sessions touched on such wide-ranging topics as deposit and extended producer responsibility systems, residential food scrap collection, textiles and resident education. As several speakers said, the field of community recycling is always changing and growing.

“The minute you think you’re a subject matter expert, a new law is in place and you have to create new programs,” Leslie Lukacs, executive director of Zero Waste Sonoma, said during the conference opener.

Finding material destinations

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 panel on market development.

“I always say don’t throw away a job,” said Wayne Gjerde, soon-to-be-retiring recycling market development coordinator at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, referring to the economic potential of trash. Throughout his career, he’s held onto a rule of thumb: “It’s all about the money. If you can’t make money, there’s no end markets, it’s not going to happen. It’s not sustainable.”

Emmet County Recycling in rural northern Michigan doesn’t have the volume to draw the interest of far-flung buyers, said panelist Lindsey Walker, who works on market development for the county. But her program has turned that potential difficulty into an advantage, using the county’s understanding and control of its waste streams to test out hyper-local opportunities and to build on successes.

Around 15 years ago, for example, a marina approached Emmet County wanting to recycle PE shrinkwrap for boats.

“Come to find out, right in our very own town with a kid I graduated with, we have Petoskey Plastics,” an LDPE manufacturer that could take the film, Walker said. What started out as a small pilot continues today, with some material also going to Trex for its composite lumber.

“About 95% of our materials are staying in the local circular economy in Michigan,” Walker added, with programs for organics, glass, cartons, wood and other materials. “Seek out local markets, build relationships and provide good clean commodities,” she advised.

States and local governments can also take an active approach to help grow new end markets from the ground up, other panelists said. The NextCycle initiative by consulting firm RRS, for example, takes the established tools of entrepreneurship incubators — business plan training, mentorship, pitch competitions and connections to investors — and aims them squarely at reuse and recycling.

“It provides an on-ramp for innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Elisa Seltzer, a senior consultant at RRS who launched the Emmet County program before leading NextCycle Michigan. Colorado and Washington state also have their own branches of the program, with support from state governments and other organizations leading to tens of millions of dollars invested and millions of pounds of material recycled.

“We need resilient supply chains, domestic manufacturing, and recycling is sitting in the perfect place to provide the feedstock and grow our economy,” Seltzer said. “Real small players can play a role in their communities, and some can scale really big.”

For example, a wine bottle reuse business called Revino is supplying wineries around the Pacific Northwest and recently obtained a specialized bottle-washing machine from Germany after joining NextCycle Washington, said Elizabeth Chin Start, founder of Start Consulting Group and a partner in the state initiative.

Another participant, the nonprofit Refugee Artisan Initiative in Seattle, turns used textiles into purses and other household products and has now connected with the U.S. Forest Service to reuse its old firefighting hoses.

“It’s just so inspiring to see these groups,” Start said, adding that the Washington program takes care to involve local organizations and focus on underrepresented communities. NextCycle is also laying the groundwork to expand into Oregon.

Angela Fox, sustainability manager for the city of Royal Oak, Michigan, said taking part in NextCycle allowed her to connect with experts and get invaluable technical assistance.

She came in hoping to get her community on solid footing for an upcoming renegotiation of a waste management contract. Now the city is working on pilot projects for organics at schools and the farmers market, streamlined collection in the business district and other improvements.

“None of this would have been possible had it not been through NextCycle,” Fox said. “It’s really been nothing but amazing.”

– By Dan Holtmeyer

‘Keep doing what you know to be right’

The opening plenary session featured women leaders in sustainability who have been highlighted in moderator MaryEllen Etienne’s recurring “Women in Circularity” feature that appears on its own website and on Resource Recycling’s website.

The panelists discussed their own varied backgrounds before entering the industry. Crystal Dreisbach, CEO of reuse-focused Upstream, emphasized it’s important to ensure the next generation can succeed. Although there are often job openings in the sustainability space, she noted organizations often end up poaching established sustainability leaders from each other. It’s logical to want to hire experts, but Dreisbach advised companies to focus on new blood. One way is to create internships.

“It is a lot of work to host interns, you have to mentor and coach and handhold a lot of times, but the payoff is huge,” Dreisbach said.

Along those same lines, Stacy Savage, founder and CEO of Zero Waste Strategies, said older generations need to start taking Generation Z seriously. She said it feels like young people are not being given the same chances.

“People in the older generations were given the opportunity to lead at very young ages,” she said. She advised current leaders to give young employees chances by “bringing them into the fold, incorporating their ideas — collaboration is key — and giving them the opportunity to lead.”

The panel also discussed the challenges of working in a dynamic field like sustainability and recycling, especially amid a rapidly changing regulatory environment.

There are frequently unforeseen challenges. Lukacs at Zero Waste Sonoma described her organization’s push to create EPR for marine flares, which can’t be safely disposed of in any way currently. The bill received 100% support in the state House and Senate, sending the bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Then he vetoed it.

Lukacs and other stakeholders figured out the technicalities that led to Newsom’s veto and even came to agree with his decision. They plan to return next year with a revised proposal.

All of that speaks to the need for sustainability leaders to practice persistence, the panel agreed.

“I’m in my fourteenth year of working against a system of waste that has been cemented as a cultural norm,” said Dreisbach. Sustainability advocates must persist, she added, “because if you keep doing what you know to be right, and you get 10,000 hours or more of that, you become an expert in that thing, whatever it is, and you can make change.”

– By Colin Staub

Curtailing contamination

Ongoing and continuous customer education and communication is vital to further grassroots recycling efforts, according to several panelists at another session.

The city of Louisville, Kentucky, uses a system that includes “oops!” tags, to notify residents of contaminants including bagged items, EPS foam and big items or tanglers, said Karen Maynard, solid waste education manager for Louisville Metro Government. The city also distributes “way to know” tags to reinforce residents’ good habits. As a result, the city has noted a 37% decrease in contaminants and an increased recovery rate at the MRF.

In Florida, Pinellas County found that data analytics can indicate which promotional platforms would be most effective in reaching residents, said Ashley Wayland, environmental outreach specialist. For example, developing an ad that causes an emotional connection with the viewer performs well, and so the county is using paid ads on Facebook and Instagram to target specific groups, such as dog owners or cyclists, and focusing on persuadable residents as a whole.

Proactive communication is proving effective in Salt Lake City, said John Lair, president and CEO of Momentum Recycling, which uses various technologies to track collection trucks and prepare monthly diversion reports for commercial customers, among other tasks. An app called Recycle Coach can send automated collection-day reminders to improve cart set-out rates, including for monthly glass pickup service, for example. In addition, when a customer fails to set out their bin four times in a row, this triggers an alert to account managers, which has reduced cancellations.

“It’s all about proactively getting information at our fingertips so we can keep these customers recycling,” Lair said.

– By Antoinette Smith