Recycling represents a tangible solution for climate action and is an engine for economic development.
Recycling market development is not a new concept. In the 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created programs to try to drive recycling and recycled-content use and purchasing. Programs such as Jobs Through Recycling (JTR) included funding for grant programs like Recycling/Reuse Business Assistance Centers and Recycling Economic Development Advocates and facilitated a network of recycling market development professionals.
The 1997, the U.S. EPA publication “Jobs Through Recycling Program: What is the Connection Between Jobs and Recycling?” described the JTR program and its grant funding as supporting local companies using recovered materials with technical, business, financial and market assistance, including writing business plans, securing financing and assessing the marketplace for recovered materials.
These programs did affect jobs and recycling in the U.S.; however, support wanned—both political and financial. Initially, federal programs and mandates drove recycled-content purchasing within the government, but the private sector lagged behind. As political views shifted, so did the funding. Though results could sometimes be uneven or programs unexpectedly discontinued, these seminal efforts helped lead to the development of the current nationwide recycling system.
Since the turn of the century, overseas manufacturing was expanding in light of its low-wage labor advantages and cost-effective overseas backhaul capacity. Strong trade trends made recyclable bales from Europe and North America very attractive. Over time, the capacity to use these recyclables outpaced supply. Consequently, export markets were accepting lower quality, off-specification bales to ensure supply requirements.
The focus for large importing mills that could handle more contamination became capturing a quantity of recycled materials. North American suppliers increased supply through convenience-sensitive single-stream collection programs and sped the mixed materials through material recovery facilities (MRFs) without removing all the contaminants. With little direct negative feedback in the form of rejections and downgrades, U.S. suppliers pushed the limits on contamination to meet supply demands. U.S. recyclers became comfortable with the export market and lagged in innovation to match the evolving recycling stream and packaging materials.
Smaller overseas mills and processors did not have the technology to deal with the contamination included in the commodity bales. That led to increased pollution in those countries. The Chinese government started to crack down on the contamination via increased inspections with its Green Fence and National Sword policies.
“The situation became untenable for regulators in those markets,” Michael Timpane, vice president of process optimization and material recovery at RRS, says. “The supply chain partners were missing the point that, though recycling is an essential input for manufacturing, off-spec materials with high contamination led to high disposal costs, lower yields and, in many cases, illegal dumping of plastics and paper contaminants into the environment, especially at smaller uncontrolled mill sites.”
When China instituted restrictions, other markets, such as Vietnam and India, started to take a large portion of materials that initially was going to China. But those markets, too, started to have similar issues with underperforming mills and the perception that the West was dumping its offal in their homelands. Inspections and bans followed in those destinations as well.
Overseas mills established their own MRF infrastructure and ramped up recovery domestically. In addition, large Asian mills started buying assets in the U.S. to generate materials to send to their manufacturing facilities overseas as either an intermediate pulp-state product or as a finished paper product.
“U.S. collection programs were under financial stress due to the decrease in commodity value and the need for capital investments to improve technology to meet higher quality specifications,” says Sean Duffy, associate senior consultant with RRS and former president and chief operating officer of ReCommunity LLC, a MRF operator.
The market disruption cascading from National Sword and a growing chorus of outcry over environmental impacts related to recycling exports, particularly around the issues of ocean plastics and unregulated waste dumping/burning, led to a reinvigorated focus on domestic recycling market development. Improving domestic recycling markets was seen as a primary solution to make the U.S. recycling system more resilient and responsible while providing the supply chains necessary for brands to fulfil emerging goals around recycled content.
U.S. Annual Production Capacity, Current Usage and Future Committed Use (Goals) for Consumer Packaging PCR
Policymakers and state agencies also are circling back to the notion that the recycling industry can be an effective economic development engine with triple bottom line benefits: people, planet and profit. Conditions are more favorable than ever to support recycling market development in light of technological advances and strengthened demand for recycled content through voluntary and mandatory requirements.
Recycling market development centers are entities or programs that typically are established and/or funded by state government. They are focused on improving recycling markets by supporting businesses that use recycled materials, bringing together resources, providing expertise and tools to coordinate strategies and overcome barriers and working to achieve positive environmental, community and economic outcomes.
States that had recycling market development programs since the 1990s and early 2000s, including Minnesota, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan, have been reinvigorated with a sense of urgency and added resources, while several states, including Washington, Colorado, New Jersey, Maryland and New York, have begun developing new recycling market development centers,.
Recently, AMERIPEN and RRS published the report “Best Practices for State Recycling Market Development Centers” based on research into leading centers nationwide that highlights elements for state governments and related stakeholders to consider when establishing or improving recycling market development centers. Fundamental to a successful program are a proper establishing framework, implementation and operational funding, operational structure and programming tools and resources:
"Recycling market development centers serve an important function to facilitate collaboration, innovation and partnership along the entire recycling value chain,” says Will Sagar, executive director of the Southeast Recycling Development Council (SERDC), Hendersonville, North Carolina. “This function is essential to connecting many of the disparate pieces within the recycling system, allowing domestic recycling markets to grow and thrive.”
State agencies play a key role in establishing and funding the center but also must engage a range of public and private partners, including local governments, collection and processing operators, reclamation and end market manufacturers, research institutions and trade organizations. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, however. Rather, each state has the opportunity to customize the approach based on local conditions.
According to the “Post-consumer Plastics Recycling Data Report,” from 2010 to 2019, U.S. postconsumer plastic recovered for recycling shifted from an approximate 40 percent/60 percent export/domestic ratio to an approximate 10 percent/90 percent ratio. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on global supply chains for all products, and domestic supply chains could prove to be more reliable.
Additionally, U.S. paper mills are expanding and converting as a result of overseas regulations and increased demand for packaging, especially boxes, because of COVID’s impact on e-commerce.
“The U.S. recycling and manufacturing industries need to see each other as partners in creating products with recycled content for the consumer,” says Dan Felton, executive director of AMERIPEN, St. Paul, Minnesota. “A collaborative effort is needed to improve commodity bale quality and create domestic end markets for these materials.”
Recycling should no longer be seen as simply an environmental practice that prevents material from going to the landfill. Recycling represents a tangible solution for climate action and is an engine for economic development, creating jobs and local investment in communities. The timing is right, and the opportunity is here for communities, recyclers and manufacturers to align and collaboratively drive growth and move forward toward a truly circular economy.
Bryce Hesterman is a consultant with RRS, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and can be contacted at bhesterman@recycle.com. Melissa Radiwon is the marketing director at RRS and can be emailed at mradiwon@recycle.com.
A briquetter supplied by Weima helps the company manage its production scrap.
The city of Peoria, Illinois, is home to eyeglass manufacturer Maui Jim, which is known for its fashion-forward approach to sunglasses and prescription eyewear.
The company’s sustainability goals increase the value of its products to modern consumers as Maui Jim has taken steps to implement green practices during production and recycling initiatives for its end-of-life products.
The process of creating custom lenses involves loose, airy scrap and cutting fluid. Each lens starts out as an 11-millimeter-thick piece of plastic that is machined and polished to the correct shape and thickness.
“As we start the whole process of making a pair of prescription lenses, they go into what we call an orbit lens generator,” Paul Ponder, vice president of prescription manufacturing at Maui Jim, says. “It creates swarf as it cuts that lens down to prescription shape and thickness. That swarf is flushed out with a fluid, used to cool the lens during the cutting process. It is also used as a wetting agent to flush it through the evacuation tubes. That fluid, which is taking the waste out, is cleaned back up and then comes back to the machine for reuse.”
Bazell Technologies has worked with Satisloh to provide the best-in-class coolant delivery equipment that Maui Jim uses to generate lenses. The engineers at Bazell worked with Weima, a German company with a U.S. sales and service office in Fort Mill, South Carolina, to select the right briquette press for the job—in this case, a Vario model—to compress the lens swarf and separate the cutting fluid for reuse.
The shavings, once they have been separated from the cutting fluid, are then conveyed from the cleaning unit to the Weima briquette press. The machine sits in its own designated space just off the production floor. Its footprint is minimal, but its presence in the process makes it possible to recycle the fluid and the swarf.
“It takes the processing of the debris off the production floor and saves space,” says Paul Dick, president and managing director of Bazell Technologies, Concord, California. “This allows space for more lens generators on the production floor.”
With 12:1 compaction rates, Maui Jim saves space by processing scrap created during production shifts instead of storing it in its original form. The briquette press compresses these shavings into round, puck-shaped briquettes that are then picked up by a recycler to be transformed into postconsumer resin, or PCR, and integrated into other material streams.
Maui Jim found that the cost for the recycler to pick up this scrap was comparable with the landfill fees they would accrue. The value of this landfill diversion added to the reasons why Maui Jim opted to recycle this material instead.
Maui Jim’s recycling efforts don’t stop there. The lifetime warranty on each pair of Maui Jim glasses extends to lenses and frames. Each time a pair of glasses is sent in for minor repairs, the frames and/or scratched lenses are also picked up by a recycler to be made into new things. The consumer will receive a pristine pair of glasses, and the damaged frames or scratched lenses leave the facility to be given a second life.
“Certainly, we want to be environmentally friendly, doing everything we can to keep anything from going to a landfill,” Ponder says. “All our lens waste, all our frame waste, any defects or rejects—it’s all recycled. Our frame designers are always looking at ways to be environmentally friendly.”
Julie-Ann Adams replaces Lida Dik.
At the end of November, the members of the European Electronics Recyclers Association (EERA), which is headquartered in the Netherlands, were told Executive Secretariat Lida Dik would leave the organization.
Kurt Kyck, president of KMK Metals Recycling of Ireland, says, “Lida has performed marvelously for EERA and all of the members over the last nine years, and we would like to thank her for all her hard work. She has all the best wishes of everyone for continued success in her new career.”
The EERA board says Julie-Ann Adams of London-based Really Green Credentials has agreed to take over as executive secretariat beginning January 2022.
Really Green Credentials is a leading U.K. and EU authority on producer environmental compliance, specializing in verification and compliance of environmental management systems and international standards and in auditing waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) treatment operators and material routes.
Adams has detailed knowledge and extensive experience of all matters WEEE and EU as she has more than 20 years’ experience in the waste management and local government sector and was a key contributor in the development and implementation of the WEEE and Battery and Accumulator Regulations in the U.K., EERA says. She is acknowledged as a leading technical adviser on producer responsibility-led regulations and standards and in the general treatment and recycling technology and waste management arena. Adams has been an active member of the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) groups, writing and reviewing the EN 50625 and EN 50614 WEEE standards since 2009.
Sims sold its majority stake in Sims Municipal Recycling for $45.4 million.
Australia-based Sims Ltd. has agreed to sell a majority stake in Sims Municipal Recycling of New York LLC (SMR) to a group of investors, including investment funds managed by New York-based Closed Loop Partners. Under terms of the transaction, Sims will sell 50.46 percent of Sims Municipal Recycling for $45.4 million and will hold two of the five Sims Municipal Recycling board seats.
According to a news release from Sims Ltd., this transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022.
Sims Municipal Recycling was formed in 2003 and offers curbside recycling, processing and marketing services in New York City. It operates four recycling facilities, three of which are in the New York-New Jersey metro area and one in Florida. This past year, Sims Municipal Recycling processed 660,000 metric tons of municipal curbside materials.
Closed Loop Partners manages venture capital, growth equity, private equity and project-based finance funds all focused on building the circular economy. Investors in Closed Loop Partners include pension funds, foundations, consumer goods companies and family offices focused on environmental, social and governance investing and the circular economy.
According to a statement from Closed Loop Partners to Recycling Today, Closed Loop Partners expects the acquisition to accelerate its focus on its investments in modernizing recycling facilities across the U.S. and closing the loop on materials.
“This transaction demonstrates Sims’ leadership and commitment to innovate quickly—and at scale—and to maximize opportunities within the circular economy,” says Alistair Field, CEO and managing director of Sims Ltd. “I am delighted that we have been able to secure a high-quality, like-minded joint venture partner who will work alongside us to create a world without waste to preserve our planet. Closed Loop Partners has the strategic management focus and expertise to help more rapidly take [Sims Municipal Recycling] to the next level in expanding recycling beyond New York City. Together, we look to expand materials accepted by SMR, optimize recycling accessibility across New York City and significantly grow SMR’s service areas across the United States.”
Réal Hamilton-Romeo, global head of communications and marketing at Sims, says the company plans to remain a major owner in SMR. She says SMR's management and operations teams will remain the same after the transaction is finalized. Additionally, she says Sims Municipal Recycling will retain its name because of its strong brand recognition.
"Sims Ltd. and Closed Loop Partners share a common goal for a waste-free world," Hamilton-Romeo says. "As a joint owner of Sims Municipal Recycling, Closed Loop Partners will leverage its extensive network to further develop the curbside recycling business as well as expand Sims Municipal Recycling into additional municipalities and additional postconsumer recyclable streams. Sims Ltd. remains a major owner and will continue to be actively involved in Sims Municipal Recycling's growth as well as sit on the business' board."
Field adds that the company plans to use the sale price to help fund other transactions the company has made recently, such as its acquisition of Recyclers Australia and Atlantic Recycling Group, which has two locations in Baltimore operating under the United Iron & Metal name, including a shredder yard, as well as a location under the Montgomery Scrap name in Rockville, Maryland.
The sale of the Ohio-based paper and packaging producer is set to close in the second quarter of 2022.
BillerudKorsnäs AB, a pulp and paper manufacturer based in Solna, Sweden, is set to acquire Miamisburg, Ohio-based Verso Corp., a producer of graphic and specialty papers, packaging and pulp.
The sale is set to close in the second quarter of 2022, with BillerudKorsnäs agreeing to acquire the Ohio company for $825 million, or $27 per share.
Verso currently has two paper mills in Michigan and a roll-to-sheet converting facility in Wisconsin as well as distribution centers in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and according to the company, currently has approximately 1,700 employees in the U.S.
BillerudKorsnäs employs more than 4,400 employees and has production units in Sweden and Finland. According to the company, the acquisition is in line with its strategy to expand its paperboard presence in the U.S. as it “aims to build one of the most cost-efficient and sustainable paperboard platforms in North America” by converting several of Verso’s assets into paperboard machines.
BillerudKorsnäs plans to convert Verso’s largest mill in Escanaba, Michigan, into a sustainable, fully integrated paperboard production site, and says one machine is estimated to be converted by 2025 and a second machine in 2029, with a total capacity of approximately 1.2 million tons.
It also plans to continue operating the Quinnesec, Michigan, mill, which has a capacity to produce about 430,000 tons of graphic and specialty papers and 240,000 tons of market pulp per year.
"The combination of BillerudKorsnäs' expertise in high-quality virgin fiber packaging materials and Verso's attractive assets creates an excellent platform for long-term profitable growth,” says BillerudKorsnäs President and CEO Christoph Michalski. “We will obtain cost-effective production of coated virgin fiber material in the Midwestern United States.
He adds, “We also plan to sequentially transform part of the business into paperboard production while continuing to serve the U.S. customers. Our investments will create new U.S.-based jobs in a growing market and accelerate the transition from plastic-based packaging materials to renewable sources."