Portland-based Routeware Inc., a provider of “smart-city” fleet automation solutions for waste haulers and municipalities, has announced it has acquired Core Computing Solutions Inc. (CCS), Jacksonville, Florida. The purchase of CCS expands Routeware’s portfolio of solutions that provide integrated end-to-end automation of municipal and private waste fleet operations.

“In addition to a shared zeal for quality solutions and exceptional customer service, CCS and Routeware already share a seamless data connection between products. Unlike some companies who cannot say when or if acquired products will ever interconnect, we offer products that already work together,” says Tom Malone, CEO of Routeware.

CCS CEO Nate Piersall says, “Our team is very excited to form this union with Routeware and the portfolio of 'best-in-class' products it brings to our clients. Offering a one-stop-shop for leading-edge technologies in a single platform has always been a dream and today it has been realized for our users. This is a total win for our clients who get a much larger organization behind us plus access to leading-edge technologies like route optimization and onboard video/sensors.”

Malone will remain as CEO of Routeware Global, and Piersall will assume the role of president of CCS. CCS will continue to operate in Jacksonville as a semi-autonomous company under Routeware Global.

Municipal recycling programs have been evolving in recent years. Ever since China introduced National Sword, recycling contracts and the economics around recycling have shifted. 

Republic Services

Richard Coupland stepped into a leadership position in the waste and recycling industry only a few years before National Sword came into play. Phoenix-based Republic Services appointed him its vice president of municipal sales in 2015. He is responsible for overseeing the $3.4 billion municipal sales division of the company. He provides leadership and guidance to about 100 municipal managers at Republic who oversee about 2,400 different partnerships for the company across the country.

Before joining the waste and recycling industry, Coupland spent about 20 years in the defense industry. While at a first glance the two industries might seem different, Coupland says he realized some similarities between them in his first few months of working at Republic Services.

“There’s a much closer alignment between the defense industry and recycling than people might understand,” he says. “My whole career, I’ve been doing business with governments, whether it was international and federal all the way down to the state and local level. The ability to understand the needs of a government and then shape the services that we offer to fit their needs has always been a comfort zone for me. So, it was actually a very easy transition for me other than learning some of the lingo on what’s important in providing recycling and waste services for cities and counties around the country.”

In the interview that follows, Coupland discusses ways communication can be improved between the recycling industry and the municipalities it serves. 

Recycling Today (RT): What is it like to work for Republic Services? 

Richard Coupland (RC): Having come from working at other large Fortune 100 companies in my career, I have not seen a culture that’s as focused on its people, its drivers and its technicians that make up the majority of our workforce as I do at Republic. And that starts with leadership. Our CEO began as a driver. He’s a bit of a legend—Don Slager is known for his achievement and his leadership of the organization. When you see a company that puts so much emphasis back into the workforce, it’s a good reason why we’re rated one of the best places to work in America. 

[There is] respect for each other within the organization and a focus on training and keeping our leaders up to speed and aware of how to continue to improve in what they do every day and how they look at their responsibilities. It really comes from the top down in terms of corporate leadership and how they view the employees that they lead. 

RT: Municipal recycling is consistently changing. What was it like for you coming into a changing industry?

RC: It wasn’t an uncomfortable place for me to stand. Again, my background came from the defense industry, where every day was filled with challenges and the need to adapt. As the recycling industry began to face its headwinds and ultimately face the crisis with China exiting [the market], that created the urgency to get very clear and to move very purposefully to help our cities around the country understand what they’re facing and what they need to do. That all is a very comfortable space for me in terms of knowing my role and informing and equipping and supporting my municipal team to help their cities navigate the crisis. 

RT: What are some projects that you have helped to lead at Republic Services in recent years?

RC: I’m really proud of the partnerships that I have with my colleagues here at Republic Services to develop campaigns like Recycling Simplified. We started that a couple of years ago in terms of recognizing the need for improved education—to touch the cities and help them understand how to improve their programs and their contract; but. more importantly, we also need to improve the public education and awareness in the United States on what to recycle and how to recycle properly. 

So, the investments to create and put public education materials out through the Recycling Simplified website are really instrumental in giving a consistent message from coast to coast. That’s a project that has really given us some nice, early results as we’ve run some pilots and watched the results in terms of contamination and improvement. 

RT: What would you say are some emerging trends you have noticed with municipal recycling? 

RC: The most visible and the most written about is the headwinds and challenges that face the recycling industry in the country today. I’m proud of my team. I think we’ve been very transparent and very forthcoming in helping to tell the story [about recycling] in a way that’s clear and understandable so that an elected official in the middle of the United States can understand how China’s decision to exit the recycling industry as a commodity buyer about two-to-three years ago translates to them. 

Being able to connect the dots and expose the real pressures and the real issues and make some very well-thought recommendations on how to keep their programs durable and robust—those are all very regular conversations that we’re having, not just with Republic Services’ partners but with any city that’s looking for advice. 

Roughly twice a year, we have run a recycling webinar for anyone to dial into from a municipal perspective and give them an update on what’s been happening in the industry [and] where the pressure points are. We typically have between 350 and 600 participants on these webinars, which is a very good indication that it’s a critical topic and folks are hungry for information on what’s going on [with recycling] and how they should proceed.

RT: What are some things Republic is doing since National Sword came out in February 2018  to change the way it operates? What’s been your role in those changes?

RC: So, the kind of the root of the challenge that China’s decision has created is an economic one. And what I mean by that is the recycling contracts and the recycling programs in America were originally based on two simple premises. One of them was that we didn’t want to charge the resident very much to begin to recycle. So, we have contracts across the country where the average price that is paid is dramatically less than the price that the resident pays for their solid waste to be collected and properly disposed. But the economic operations are the same—it’s the same truck, it’s the same driver, it’s the same house on a different day. So, we undercharged the resident because we were able to sell the recyclables in the market for a really good return, and a lot of people think that people in the industry were making tons of money. The reality was they were making revenue, but we needed to pay back the drivers and operations. That’s kind of a myth we created for the public—that recycling was free and tons of money [could] be made doing it. 

When China stepped away, as 30 or 40 percent of the volume in the world or 30 percent in America went to China, that created a surplus in the commodity market, and the value of all that material now has dropped by 80 to 100 percent in an 18-month period. Now, we have all these long-term contracts, and the recycling is upside down because we don’t make the money on the value to pay for the trucks and the drivers and the equipment. So, that has been the most dramatic effort that I’ve been working on—to shed light on the simplicity of that fact. It’s not as much about the contamination and cleaning up of the stream; that’s a piece of the equation, but if cities don’t reset their contracts to stand on their own, then more and more small and midsized companies are going to go out of business. And as a country, we need them—we desperately need that capacity and those people to process that material. 

RT: Cleaning up contamination is a big concern for many MRFs. How is Republic Services working to clean up quality at its MRFs?

RC: It’s twofold. We are making investments and more advanced technology to yield a better product. We’re also investing in more labor and slowing down some of our processing in some facilities so that the equipment and human labor can do their job to find and remove contaminants that shouldn’t be in the stream. 

The flip side of that is all that heavy investment, millions of dollars we pumped into education and the Recycling Simplified campaign, so that we can teach the public what to recycle and how to do it better so that the quality of what comes into each of our facilities is better. 

Republic Services

RT: Would you say quality at Republic MRFs improved in 2019 compared with 2018? 

RC: I’ll say in the municipalities that have embraced the new public education best practices, we’ve seen really encouraging results. An example, we took a town in Texas that we have partnered with and we’ve seen a 10 percent improvement in contamination in as little as eight weeks by putting very targeted education materials into those communities and portions of the communities that were the worst offenders. There’s a cost to run that education, but as a best practice, we can prove now with real data that if a city wants to apply that program and then keep that fresh year over year, they can drive behavior in their community, and that drives better quality and more value for the commodity that you’re recycling.

RT: Contracts between municipalities and haulers and MRFs are also changing. What changes do you think need to be made with municipal recycling contracts?

RC: When it comes to the contracts themselves, there are four things. You need to reset the contract to be on those terms that are durable and cover the two services. Next, evaluate the materials that are in your program so that you are recycling the right material, not any material. So, the right materials would be the things that have value and also are environmentally beneficial to the planet. You want a really robust public education program that’s not just a one-time occurrence; it actually is in the contract to keep people current on what trends are evolving around them. And then, your metrics and how you measure success have got to be well thought out. 

Today, in America, we only talk about success of recycling in weight by the ton, and that’s encouraging people to recycle anything instead of the right things. That’s an element that cities need to reevaluate. There should be some guidance on a consistent measurement of success across the country if we want to move to a better place. 

Richard Coupland is the vice president of municipal sales at Phoenix-based Republic Services. More information is available at www.republicservices.com. 

BASF Canada, a subsidiary of BASF SE and an affiliate of BASF Corp. that’s headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, has launched a pilot platform in the province of British Columbia that aims to enable better sorting, traceability and transparency of recycled plastics throughout the value chain. According to the company, reciChain, the pilot project platform, “will introduce a more sustainable alternative to the linear economic model, reducing plastic waste, maximizing its value and enhancing resource efficiency.”

Canada disposed of nearly 3.3 million tons of plastic scrap in 2016, according to a report produced by Deloitte for Environment and Climate Change Canada. Of these plastics, less than 11 percent were recycled, meaning the rest was landfilled or lost to the environment. 

“There is a clear global challenge around the economics of recycling plastic,” says Marcelo Lu, president of BASF Canada. “Much of the collection and sorting activities are challenged by manual processes and material contamination. Additionally, traceability is a concern as new commitments start to emerge from brand owners and retailers. With reciChain, our goal is to revitalize the value of plastics and significantly improve circularity in the supply chain.” 

The reciChain platform combines the power of blockchain with a digital badge and loop count technology that enables the secured sharing of data among market participants, while improving the sorting, tracing and monitoring of plastics throughout the value chain. According to a news release from BASF Canada, the result is “a more competitive circular supply chain rather than a linear one, extending the life cycle of plastics.” The platform can also provide better assurance to brand owners of the validity of the certificates they purchase from recyclers and converters.

Initially piloted by BASF in Brazil, the idea for reciChain came from a need in that market to deal with social inequality issues as well as regulatory concerns around issuing recycling certificates. Given its ability to tokenize the recycling value of plastics, the platform enables a fairer distribution of value added along the supply chain, even to cooperatives, which traditionally generate lower returns compared with other businesses. Also, the improved transparency from the material flow in the platform provides better compliance with recycling documentation. The project has already secured participation of some large Brazilian key players and will continue to be developed in Parallel with the Canadian pilot project.

The company reports that Deloitte is acting as a strategic advisor for the pilot project in British Columbia. The team is currently validating the pilot project’s value in the local supply chain with the goal of expanding it to a nationwide solution to improve recycling and recovery of plastics in Canada. 

“A successful implementation of reciChain will result in a collaborative digital consortium that will bring together plastic manufacturers, suppliers, government entities, retailers, waste collectors and recyclers aimed at keeping the life of plastic molecules circular,” adds Anthony DiPrinzio, head of BASF Blockchain Lab. “Leveraging blockchain technology, we can work together to ensure our products deliver back to the value chain and contribute to a circular economy.” 

Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Rep. Alan Lowenthal of California along with Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts introduced the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act of 2020 Feb. 11, legislation that would phase out unnecessary single-use plastic products, hold corporations accountable for wasteful products, reduce wasteful packaging and reform the nation’s waste and recycling collection system, they say. 

“The plastic pollution crisis is past the tipping point. Our communities, our waterways and even our bodies are at risk,” Udall says. “We are already bearing the cleanup costs of mountains of plastic waste, and it will only get worse for future generations. We have a responsibility to act now before the overwhelming public health, environmental, climate and economic effects of plastic pollution reach the point of no return. 

“Our solutions are not only possible—they are practical and are already being implemented in cities and states across the country, including in my home state of New Mexico,” he continues. “But we need a comprehensive, national strategy to tackle this tidal wave of pollution before it is too late. We must drive the innovation necessary to break free from this unnecessary, toxic waste stream that is also accelerating the destruction of our planet via climate change. This bill calls on all of us, from companies to communities, to address this crisis head-on so that we can create a plastic pollution-free world.”

According to a press release from Udall’s press office, the legislation is co-sponsored by a number of senators and representatives already.

The Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act plans to provide national leadership on the issue of reducing plastic pollution and improving recycling collection systems, according to a news release from Udall’s press office. It also aims to shift the burden of cleanup to corporations that produce plastic waste. According to the news release from Udall’s press office, the legislation aims to:

• require big corporations take responsibility for their pollution, requiring producers of plastic products to design, manage, and finance waste and recycling programs;
• spur innovation, incentivizing big corporations to make reusable products and items that can be recycled;
• create a nationwide beverage container refund program, which is successful at the state level;
• reduce and ban certain single-use plastic products that are not recyclable;
• establish minimum recycled content requirements for beverage containers, packaging and food-service products, while standardizing recycling and composting labeling; and
• spur massive investments in U.S. domestic recycling and composting infrastructure, while pressing pause on new plastic facilities until critical environment and health protections are put in place. 

Support and concern for the recycling legislation

Associations and industry groups have mixed views on the proposed legislation. 

The Plastics Industry Association (Plastics), Washington, has expressed concerns about the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act of 2020.

“The title of this bill suggests it is more interested in garnering headlines than it is in finding solutions,” says Tony Radoszewski, president and CEO of Plastics. “Plastics only account for 13 percent of municipal solid waste in the U.S. Any effort to specifically target plastic materials—that after life cycle analysis, prove to be more environmentally desirable than other materials—would be misguided at best and harmful at worst.”

Radoszewski adds that the association thinks that other legislative measures that were previously introduced—including the Realizing the Economic Opportunities and Values of Expanding Recycling (RECOVER) Act, the Recycling Enhancements to Collection and Yield through Consumer Learning and Education (RECYCLE) Act and the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act—provide better approaches to address plastic pollution than the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act.

However, Sarah Pierpont, executive director of the New Mexico Recycling Coalition (NMRC), says that association is supporting the federal legislation, which she says would create a “huge shift in how we manage plastic production, disposal, recycling and accountability” in the United States.

Pierpont reached out to members of the JTR (Jobs Through Recycling) Professional Recyclers Network email list, asking them to consider submitting a letter of support for the legislation to Udall’s office at plastic@tomudall.senate.gov and to Lowenthal’s office at plastic@mail.house.gov. She adds that Udall’s office began reaching out for stakeholder input on this legislation six months ago and has received feedback from more than 200 stakeholders.

She adds that NMRC is compiling a database of plastic pollution images in New Mexico (and across the country) to share with Udall’s office, adding, “These images are a powerful tool to show the destruction plastic can cause in our environment.” 

While Pierpont says the NMRC is “the voice of recycling” in New Mexico, she adds, “yet we understand that the current plastic waste crisis cannot be managed by proper solid waste systems and recycling alone. It is important to stop the flow of new plastic into our environment.”

In the letter the NMRC submitted in support of the legislation, Pierpont writes: “Today, 14 percent of oil and 8 percent of gas is used for the manufacture of petrochemicals, the essential feedstock of plastic production. The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2050, 50 percent of the growth in oil demand will be related to petrochemicals, meaning we are extracting fossil fuels, not for energy but for our plastic soda bottles that we use once.

“And plastic consumption continues to climb, with global plastic production expected to triple by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum.”

In her letter, Pierpont states that the proposed legislation “has the promise to turn off the flood of single-use plastic and plastic pollution at the source while holding plastic producers responsible for collecting and recycling materials.”

The letter also states, “To make recycling work, manufacturers must ‘close the loop’ and manufacture new plastic items out of recycled material, not from ethane pumped from wells and piped over America’s waterways and communities to plastic manufacturing facilities. The proposed legislation would require plastic beverage containers to include an increasing percentage of recycled content in their product before it enters the market. This creates a domestic market for our recycled plastic materials.” 

Pierpont says the proposed legislation would require producers of covered products to design, manage and finance programs to collect and process end-of-life products that would normally burden state and local governments. “Producers will cover the costs of waste management and cleanup, as well as awareness raising measures for covered products, which includes packaging, containers, paper and food-service products, regardless of the recyclability, compostability and type of material,” she adds.

The legislation also would institute a 10-cent national refund requirement for all beverage containers, regardless of material, to be refunded to customers when they return containers.

Additionally, some single-use plastic products, such as plastic carryout bags, expanded polystyrene food and drinkware and plastic utensils would be phased out of sale and distribution if the legislation is adopted.

The proposed legislation also would introduce a fee on the distribution of carryout bags and set minimum recycled content requirements for plastic beverage containers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would be required to implement postconsumer minimum recycled content for other covered products and material types after the National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted a review to determine technical feasibility, according to the bill.

The bill would prevent plastic scrap from being exported from the U.S. to non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, which can be sources of ocean plastics because of insufficient waste management infrastructure.

Finally, the legislation would temporarily halt permitting for new or expanded virgin plastics production facilities so environmental agencies can investigate impacts on the environment and communities.

Pierpont writes in her JTR post, “Please let me know if you have any questions about NMRC’s support of this proposed legislation, plastic waste, recycling in New Mexico and how this legislation will help New Mexico’s sustainable materials management/recycling programs.” She can be contacted at 505-603-0558 or at sarah@recyclenewmexico.com.