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A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier

Sunday, September 20, 2020

It’s always nice to read that even with a reduction of recycled materials in the commercial sector due to the virus, new recycling facilities are coming on line. These are to handle more products from back-of-house commercial and industrial settings. From a recent Resource Recycling newsletter, we learn of such a new 64,000-square-foot facility in Green Bay, Wis.

It is this company’s eighth such facility. Via trailer-loads, they take recycled materials brought in exclusively from industrial and commercial clients. These materials include clean streams of OCC, plastics, some metals, etc.

The materials come from several different companies. For example, from the food industry operations, they get items from their processors, distributors, and packagers. Among others, they also get materials from the printing and writing industries.

As a spokesperson for the company explained, “Some people have called our plants ‘clean MRFs.’ We’re not handling residential [recycled materials]. We don’t have a sort line at our plants.”

Their materials are sorted and prepared for shipment directly to end markets. Loose cardboard is baled; paper rolls cut down to a uniform size using a guillotine cutter. These products go directly to end users, such as paper mills and plastic reclaimers, which are fairly abundant in the area.

Enough about them (besides the Green Bay Packers beat one of my two favorite NFL teams last week, the Vikes! My other favorite is the Texans). Next, we will go to an article about the nation’s largest waste and recycling hauler, the Houston-based Waste Management (WM) company.

In that company’s September 2020 “Report on Recycling,” it spoke of some of its current goals plus identified some “…gaps in U.S. plastics recycling infrastructure.” An advocacy group, As You Sow, asked WM to provide more information about its plastic management efforts.

Due to this request, WM did an “in-depth” study. Using info from that study, As You Sow, provided a report hoping it “will serve as a valuable first step in a broader conversation with regulators, packaging producers and consumer brands about policies and practices required to rapidly increase the amount of plastic recycled in the U.S., especially those for which there are existing markets.”

Some stats about the Waste Management company. It operates/will operate 49 MRFs (including four facilities which recently opened or will be opening this year). Of these, 20 of them received an optical sorter or screen upgrades within the past two years.

Within the next three years, plans are for 12 more MRFs to have these investments. These upgrades were at a cost of $6.5 million in 2019. One of these optical sorters in an older plant allowed the company‘s PET capture rate to increase from 94% to 98%.

The company’s report states, “Barring any longterm changes in market conditions and recycling volumes, including impacts of COVID-19, WM anticipates processing 91% of our single-stream tons at the 73% of our MRFs where [we] will have improved processing capabilities as a result of investments in construction and upgrades by 2023.”

Next week we will address a little more about the current status and plans for the recycling of the PET plastic bottles. Till then, wishing you a very safe, happy, and healthy week.

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666