Environmental Office Solutions Inc. (EOS), East Hartford, Connecticut, says it has attained R2v3 certification status, referring to the most recent upgrade in standards set for the electronics industry by Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI).

EOS says it is “committed to continuous improvement through the monitoring of objectives and rigorous evaluation of our management system, which guides our end-of-life recycling programs that help preserve the environment.”

EOS founder Chris Stoddard says, “We are pleased to have received our certification to the new R2v3 standard and thank the entire EOS team who helped make this happen. Our company was started over 25 years ago on the principles of reuse and reducing waste, this latest upgrade demonstrates our continued commitment to these principles.”

EOS cites global concerns about the environment and data security threats as driving its effort to attain R2v3 certification. R2v3, says the company, addresses those issues “through enhanced documentation, data security controls, material flow management and heightened reuse objectives and operations.”

The company says it has embraced R2 standards and principles since 2012, and the latest upgrade demonstrates its commitment to best practices in the recycling industry. In addition to R2, EOS says it also has been approved as a downstream vendor by the Recycler Qualification Office as part of the Canadian EPRA Recycler Qualification Program.

EOS was founded in 1996 by Stoddard and Mark Tosi and describes itself as providing custom-tailored, comprehensive, closed-loop recycling and end-of-life asset recovery programs for large corporations, small businesses, federal, state and municipal governments and educational institutions.

The company operates from a 40,000-plus-square-foot recycling facility in East Hartford and another 40,000-plus-square-foot recycling, warehouse and distribution facility in Colorado.

The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia, has released its "2022 Impact Report," detailing its work with communities, material recovery facilities (MRFs), materials manufacturers, brands and retailers and people. The report presents a future system where:

• all households can recycle;
• people know what and how to recycle;
• MRFs are fully modernized;
• stakeholders work together to overcome material-specific obstacles to recycling;
• packaging that enters the system is designed for or on a path to recyclability; and
• recycling has a sustainable public-private funding stream based on smart policy.

With regard to economic impact, The Recycling Partnership has invested $95 million to date, accumulating $241 million in total value creation, including:

• $163 million in capital and state investments in recycling;
• $24 million in new recyclables collected;
• $19 million in technical assistance to cities and states;
• $16 million in carbon savings;
• $13 million in avoided landfill costs; and
• $6 million in member consulting.

Solving with communities

The state of Michigan, which established the goal of increasing statewide recycling from 14 percent in 2019 to 45 percent by 2030, is receiving assistance from The Partnership. The Partnership has provided support with contributions such as carts for curbside recycling, improved drop-off recycling, enhanced MRF operations and the Feet on the Street program to improve the quantity and quality of material captured. In the first year of this collaboration, contamination in curbside collection programs was reduced by 35 percent, while contamination in drop-off programs was reduced by 26 percent and participation across most involved communities increased by 10 percent.

In Orlando, Florida, The Partnership focused on access to recycling for multifamily communities, which the organization says are among the most underserved in the U.S. The Partnership conferred a grant to the city that funded a full-time city employee to serve as a multifamily recycling project manager. Overall, the city added recycling services to 21,500 multifamily units in the first year of this four-year project. Increased participation in the city’s recycling program led to an additional 2.2 million pounds of recyclables diverted from landfills in the program’s first year.

A $10 million-plus public-private partnership between Baltimore and The Recycling Partnership delivered nearly 200,000 free curbside recycling carts to households in the city. The report says this is the largest partnership to modernize recycling to date and enables safer and more efficient collection while minimizing waste in waterways. The amount of recovered recyclables is expected to increase by 80 percent, generating more than 40 million new valuable recyclables every year.

The report notes the Recycling Inclusion Fund, a dedicated funding stream created by The Partnership that focuses on adapting the recycling industry through research, infrastructure and education and leadership opportunities in the Black, Indigenous and people of color, or BIPOC, community.

Solving with MRFs

To tackle aluminum can sorting problems, The Partnership launched an aluminum beverage can capture MRF grant program to invest in eddy-current separators, robotic sorters, other equipment and process improvement to capture more cans during the sortation process. Five grants were made to MRFs across the U.S. in 2021.

Overall, the equipment installed at MRFs from the five 2021 can capture grants will result in an 71 million aluminum cans recycled every year, the report says. According to the Can Manufacturers Institute’s impact calculator, this will lead to an additional $1.15 million of revenue generated for the U.S. recycling system and energy savings that could power more than 28 million U.S. homes for one hour.

The Partnership’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition, founded in July 2020, has made more than $6 million in grants for sorting equipment at MRFs and consumer education programs in communities. These funds, the report says, will impact nearly 18 million Americans and improve curbside polypropylene recycling access for nearly 7 percent of U.S. households.

Solving with materials manufacturers

The Partnership leads three material-specific coalitions: The Polypropylene Recycling, the Film and Flexibles Recycling Coalition and the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) Recycling Coalition, formed in 2022. Advancing the recyclability of one material type improves the system for all by increasing the amount of material captured and reducing contamination, the organization says.

Orange County, Florida, began to work with The Partnership in light of a nearly 40 percent contamination rate in its curbside recycling program. The program reduced contamination by 29 percent, improving material value by 23 percent and generating 40 million pounds of recyclables annually. Materials processed at the county’s MRFs increased tenfold from 2020 to 2021 as well. Based on the report, the program with the county has the potential to recover $3.6 million in recycled material value when implemented countywide.

Solving with brands and retailers

The Residential Recyclability Framework, a part of The Partnership’s Pathway to Circularity for Packaging that provides users a step-by-step process to assess packaging recyclability, was opened for public comment in August 2021. The Partnership received more than 750 individual comments from 70 organizations, which were incorporated to establish the Circular Packaging Assessment Tool, an interactive version of the framework.

Another tool presented in the report is Plastic IQ, a free digital strategy-building tool that allows U.S. companies to discover ways to make their packaging more circular. Plastic IQ scores company strategies for effectiveness and provides a detailed summary of results for users. According to the report, Plastic IQ has gained 1,000 users in its first year.

Solving with people  

The Partnership is launching the Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact. The Center will focus on expanding research on barriers and sentiments toward recycling, testing solutions to improve recycling behavior and creating a playbook and accompanying online tool to make best practices and key insights widely available.

The report concludes with a three-year plan focused on transforming the U.S. recycling system and accelerating circular packaging systems of the future.

Additional goals include:

• recovery and collection of more than 1 billion pounds of new recyclables each year;
• improved consumer participation and trust in recycling and improved recyclability claims and labeling;
• creation of new scalable and systematic approaches to recyclability for currently hard-to-recycle items;
• initiation of effective and efficient policy that improves recycling system performance; and
• transformation of thousands of packages to recyclability and reduction of tens of millions of pounds of packaging through improved designs.

Circular.co, Palo Alto, California, has launched its full-service digital platform that introduces a new way to buy and sell sustainable commodities at scale, starting with a focus on recycled plastics. The platform helps essential industries evolve to a more sustainable future by offering efficient online trading, accessible data and transparent economics, according to the company. Circular’s digital infrastructure tools are designed to simplify supply chain logistics by doing all the sourcing, vetting, matching, contracting, shipping and billing for its customers. Buyers and sellers can trade with confidence backed by a full guarantee and a dedicated concierge to facilitate the entire process.

“Circular’s focus is on the big economic and environmental picture behind helping brands and major manufacturers access the materials they need to meet sustainability goals,” says Circular’s founder and CEO Ian Arthurs. “There is more than enough [recyclable] material out there to meet demand, but the industry has lacked the infrastructure and economic transparency to support greater recovery and circularity.”

“Circular selected recycled plastics to start because of the scale of opportunity and challenge this industry faces,” says Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner, Eclipse Ventures and board member of Circular. “Over 380 million tons of virgin plastic are produces each year and global recycling rates remain under 9 percent, dropping to under 5 percent recently in the U.S. This results in oceans of waste, microplastics in our bloodstream and roughly 2 gigatons per year of C02 pumped into our atmosphere.”

“The plastics industry is essential to the global economy and clearly needs to evolve sustainably as fast as possible,” says Madigan-Curtis. “The digital tools required to help this sustainable evolution already exist in other industries; it’s inevitable they will apply to the plastic industry; our aim is to expedite the process.”

As a leading early adopter of sustainable packaging, Method and Ripple Foods founder Adam Lowry realizes the challenges companies face sourcing quality recycled material.

 “We applaud major brands and manufacturers setting sustainability goals to reduce their dependence on virgin plastic. Now is the time to take real action on those pledges,” Lowry says. “With positive economics, recyclers are investing in more capacity, and Circular’s digital platform gives buyers and sellers more options, making trading easier. For the first time in over a decade, I feel confident we’ve got the right ingredients for real change.”

“By delivering a transparent digital trading experience, brands and manufacturers can now confidently buy sustainable materials at scale,” says Arthurs. “This creates a clear economic opportunity which in turn stimulates innovation to create more supply, more liquidity and ultimately greater circularity, less waste and less C02. Marrying the best of technology with the reality of how plastic is bought, creates a real win-win, which is ultimately Circular’s goal.”

Circular says its leadership team is uniquely positioned to deliver on its objectives, bringing decades of technology platform experience from the likes of Google, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Bloomberg, Snap and Medium. Complementing that, Arthurs added a deep branch of senior industry advisors, including Lowry and executives in the recycling and manufacturing spaces. Rounding out the team, Circular secured Eclipse Ventures, a top venture capital firm helping entrepreneurs build exceptional companies that make physical industries more efficient, resilient and profitable, as their lead investor. The combination brings an unparalleled depth of expertise in digitizing physical industries, including manufacturing, supply chain and logistics.

For the past year, Circular and Eclipse have been conducting research and development and testing the digital platform among buyers and sellers. Circular.co is now prepared to launch and offer real scale for global buyers and sellers. 

Sonoco, a Hartsville, South Carolina-based sustainable packaging company, has announced Rob Dillard has been named chief financial officer (CFO), effective July 1.

Dillard, 48, most recently served as the company's chief strategy officer. In his new role, he will be responsible for Sonoco's global finance functions, including audit, controllership, financial reporting, tax, treasury, risk management and insurance, financial planning and analysis, as well as strategy and corporate development.

"We are pleased to have Rob assume this critical finance leadership role," Sonoco President and CEO Howard Coker says. "Rob is a strategic leader within the company and brings extensive experience in corporate finance and accounting, operations, strategy and corporate development from both Fortune 500 companies and investment banking."

Coker continues, "As our new CFO, Rob will use his experience and deep knowledge of Sonoco's culture and strategic opportunities to partner with our global business leaders to further drive performance improvement and shareholder value."

Dillard takes over for Julie Albrecht, who announced May 25 she was departing the company June 30. Albrecht joined Sonoco in March 2017 as corporate vice president, treasurer and assistant CFO, and the company says she has been instrumental in its activities to improve cash flow generation, de-risk and annuitize its domestic defined pension plans and finance more than $2 billion in strategic acquisitions.

Dillard joined Sonoco in 2018 and Sonoco says he has led its corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions activities in that time, including leading the development of the company's overall strategy, which includes the $1.35 billion acquisition of Ball Metalpack—Sonoco's largest acquisition to date.