With construction and demolition (C&D) debris accounting for nearly 52 percent of its landfill’s buried waste between January and September of this year, Pitkin County, Colorado, has created the Construction and Demolition Debris Diversion program which aims to divert C&D materials from the landfill, which is on pace to fill up in eight years, reports the Aspen Daily News.

According to Pitkin County, a 2016 analysis of the county’s landfilled waste stream revealed that 35 percent of the landfilled C&D material could have been recovered.

The program creates tiered tipping fees for C&D materials, which increase as tonnage increases:

• Tier 1—for zero to 30 tons, cost is $98.25/ton
• Tier 2—for 31-60 tons, cost is $118.25/ton
• Tier 3—for 61 tons or more, cost is $138.25/ton
• Tier 4—for mixed-waste loads including trash and recoverable materials, the cost is $198.25 per ton.

However, the county gives a break to contractors that source separate their materials. Source-separated loads do not count toward the tiered tonnage limits and are cheaper to dispose of, says the county.

Tipping fees for separated C&D materials range from $10.50-$15 per ton for rocks and dirt to $45 per ton for clean wood, concrete and porcelain and lighter organic materials, such as branches. There is no fee for cardboard and scrap metal loads, which are recycled, says the county.

To participate in the program, contractors must pay a deposit of $1,000 per ton of their estimated waste, which is refunded if they divert a minimum of 25 percent of their C&D materials, reports the Aspen Daily News. Of the deposits paid this year, about $8,500 has not been refunded.

The county also has implemented its Green Halo Dashboard, a system participating contractors use to demonstrate their diversion rate. The system also aggregates data for all the participating projects in Pitkin County, offering a snapshot of the county’s C&D diversion data.

However, the Aspen Daily News reports that city of Aspen and town of Snowmass Village don’t participate in the program, which lowers the county’s diversion rate and shortens the landfill’s life.

The paper quotes Pitkin County C&D Diversion Specialist Michael Port as saying that 20 percent of the county’s C&D projects participated in the diversion program, hurting the overall diversion rate. The county is considering expanding the program, requiring incorporated areas to participate, as well.

Clean Vision Corp., Los Angeles, has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Manhattan Beach, California-based Clean-Seas Inc., has signed letters of intent with Templeton, Massachusetts-based MacVallee LLC to establish a co-located Clean-Seas facility in central Massachusetts that will divert postindustrial and ocean-bound plastic from landfills and incineration and convert it into precursors for new plastics, ultra-low sulfur fuels, pyrolysis oils and Clean-Seas’ branded hydrogen, AquaH.

MacVallee says it purchased the site earlier this year and will establish its own complementary recycling facility at the location, with revenue operations planned to begin in the first quarter of 2023. The company says it will source plastic feedstock for both facilities under an agreement with Argyle, New York-based Evolve Resource Management.

MacVallee says it will draw on existing relationships across the U.S. to ensure a consistent supply of plastic feedstock to its facility and to the Clean-Seas co-located plant. In phase one, Clean-Seas says it projects to process 50 tons per day with the expectation to expand the facility in subsequent phases, eventually diverting up to 500 tons per day of plastic material from landfills and incineration.

The companies say they expect the new facility to begin operations in early 2024.

“Our combined efforts will ensure that every scrap of plastic finds a beneficial use, on one site,” MacVallee President Daniel McLaughlin says. “We are excited to partner with Clean-Seas.”

Clean-Seas says it will use its relationships to secure the capital and technology to establish the facilities.

“This is a great opportunity for Clean-Seas to partner with a company whose management has deep roots in the recycling industry and that also shares our commitment to sustainability and innovation,” Clean-Seas Vice President of Business Development John Yonce says. “This partnership will deliver significant economies of scale to both companies’ operations.”

The first phase of the Clean-Seas facility is budgeted at $20 million, the company says, with funding anticipated from equity and project debt, to support a projected revenue of $7 million in the first year. Operations will begin at MacVallee’s 24-acre site in central Massachusetts, which is adjacent to a rail line for efficient delivery of plastic feedstock and shipping of finished commodity products.

The companies say additional sources of funding for the project could include the Massachusetts commonwealth and federal incentives and grants that are available through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Photo courtesy of WM

Boosting recycling rates by unlocking new material supplies is one of the biggest challenges the recycling industry faces today, according to Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at WM.

He says WM wants to find ways to increase the materials it recycles from current residential and commercial customers as well as expand to serve new communities that lack residential curbside recycling programs.

“That’s our motivation—unlock supply for existing customers and then go into new markets that don’t have sustainability service offerings,” Bell says.

He adds that WM has recently invested to expand in several communities this fall, including Cleveland; Seattle; Spokane, Washington; and Pembroke Pines, Florida. 

In addition to expanding services with existing and new customers, WM, headquartered in Houston, wants to see a wider variety of materials recycled. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), also known as film plastics, are seldom accepted in curbside recycling programs since most material recovery facilities (MRFs) lack infrastructure to sufficiently handle films.

In 2023, WM plans to launch a plastic film recycling pilot program in Hickory Hills, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago, and has partnered with Midland, Michigan-based Dow Inc. to help with the program. Hickory Hills covers about 3,500 households, and through the pilot, WM customers will be able to recycle film plastics in their curbside recycling bins.

WM says it plans to invest more than $800 million through 2025 to improve and enhance its recycling infrastructure to sort plastic films, and Dow plans to support this initiative by incorporating this recycled content into some of its product solutions.

In addition to the partnership with Dow, WM plans to acquire a controlling interest in Houston-based Avangard Innovative. Through this acquisition, WM says it will launch an independent company known as Natura PCR to provide circular solutions for films and clear plastic wrap, such as plastic stretch wrap and shrink wrap, from its commercial customers.

Recycling Today connected with Bell to discuss WM's latest efforts with Avangard Innovative and Dow that aim to increase the recycling rates and end-market viability for film plastics.

Recycling Today (RT): About two months ago, WM announced plans to acquire Avangard Innovative to develop Natura PCR. Why did this deal seem like a good fit for WM, and what progress has been made on this deal?
Brent Bell (BB): One of the thought processes behind that is we were handling a lot of film for large national chains—grocery store chains and things of that nature—and of all the commodities, plastic film [is] the most difficult for us to find homes for. We were working with Avangard [and] they could process a little bit, but they only had one facility here in the Houston area. What we realized was taking the film to them, having them process that film and then some of their customers would include Dow, they were ultimately able to make their product back into a grocery bag or a garbage sack.

Our customers … love recycling and they had grown to ask us for more sustainable solutions. This is actually providing a circular solution. [With this acquisition], we can actually take that customer’s material, process it through a partnership with Avangard and ultimately have it back on the store shelf of the same store that generated that material to begin with. So, the circularity solution was really interesting to us.

That’s when we said, ‘Let’s do this investment, have this relationship with Avangard,’ which we’re going to call that company Natura PCR. It hasn’t quite closed yet officially, but once it does close, that will be a company that we’ll be able to help expand to other markets, perhaps expand their current facility and operations to take more material. … To be clear, the film and the relationship that we have with Avangard it is what I’ll call the Grade A-type film that would be coming from the back of a distribution center or a large retail or grocery store chain where, in most of the cases, the customer is separating and baling that material and that we would just manage it for them.

[The deal with Avangard] kind of solved that issue we had with our end markets, but also opened up the door for the circularity solutions. So, we’re very excited about that relationship moving ahead with the Natura PCR.

RT: On America Recycles Day, which is Nov. 15, WM announced a partnership with Dow, which will enable WM to start a plastic film recycling pilot program in a Chicago suburb. Why and how is that partnership a good fit for your business?
BB: When we started developing a relationship with Dow, then we were looking at the automation that we’ve been doing with some of our facilities, saying we’d like to enhance the acceptable items list that these facilities take today. Plastic film is one of the lowest recycling rates we have today. Access to curbside recycling for plastic film is extremely small. And we were part of the issue for that. A lot of the equipment recycling facilities had, film would wrap up and not do well in the operations of these facilities. With these automations that we’re doing, it kind of opens the door to say it looks like that film can be handled differently in these automated facilities, be able to be source separate it out and have a valuable end market for that material. That’s where we were working with Dow.

We get a fair amount of film [contamination] in facilities today, so, we kind of know how they are being handled and how they work through the equipment. But we said, ‘What if we actually turn on a community?’ Hickory Hills was selected—it will feed our Chicago facility. … We said, ‘Let’s see how that film, once you open up the doors, if you will, and accept that item in a program, let’s see how it reacts within the facility.’ … It just kind of tests the end results to say what kind of film do we get? How much additional film will we get than we were already getting, even though it wasn’t accepted? How can the facilities handle it? Then, most importantly, what kind of end markets can that material go into?

That’s all stuff the pilot will help us find and learn. Obviously, the hopes would be that we would get some good best practices that we can roll out to [other] communities.

RT: How has WM communicated with Hickory Hills residents about introducing plastic film in the curbside recycling program?
BB: We’ve been working with [Hickory Hills] for the last two months on informing their residents with some campaigns on including the plastic films into their system. We have some ad campaigns with some pictures on it to show you what kind of materials they can put in there now, which ones are new. I’m sure some residents will say, ‘I’ve put film in my system for years. I didn’t know it wasn’t accepted.’

… We are trying to really document, have a baseline for how much plastics and film and materials were we collecting before, and then now how much additional film can we get once we essentially turn on this pilot and really are able to educate consumers on what goes in there and just see what that difference is. Even today, I think we can tell you that by not having film accepted in programs, I think MRFs across the country probably get an average of at least 1 to 2 percent of film already even though it's not accepted.

RT: What kind of technology will help you with processing plastic film you’re collecting in Hickory Hills and potentially from other communities in the future?
BB: We’re doing this $800 million investment in all of our infrastructure to essentially [upgrade] all of our facilities that handle residential materials like next-generation MRFs. To get film out, there’s some additional equipment that we have to install. I put that into two different categories. There’s the traditional, proven film extraction systems—they’re kind of bag suction systems over conveyors. The next step would be to actually sort that film from the lightweights that get collected in that suction system, like paper that can be picked up in that as well. Then, once that’s separated, we would bale that film. So, that’s kind of a traditional system.

Then, we are trying to do technology in other recycling facilities outside of Chicago to see how can this new technology handle film compared to the traditional, proven methods. Is that less of a capital investment? Do you get a cleaner grade of material? We’re looking at investing in other technologies to extract film out as well.

RT: Recycling plastic film has been a challenge for a long time. Why does now make sense to form partnerships to try to recycle plastic film?
BB: When you look at your commodities, you look at what [you] can guarantee we’ll have long-term, sustainable homes and good outlets for our customers’ material. … You hear all the announcements for all these companies saying they want to put more recycled content back into their products. Then along with that, you’re seeing some regulation is coming online, minimum-content laws like in New Jersey and California and then even extended producer responsibility regulation coming on. So, all this shapes up to say there’s going to be very high demand for recycled material in the future.

Film specifically was a part that didn’t have a lot of solid infrastructure here in the U.S. We thought it is one space to get into that we really struggle finding markets for. So, how can WM get into that space with some investments in finding good, sustainable homes that tells a circularity story with our customers? That’s why film looks like an attractive [area]. If you’re going to pick all the commodities, this is the one space it really needs some investments, all the way from the curbside to the processing side to the markets. That’s where we found this attractive.

RT: What other work does WM plan to do related to recycling film plastics in 2023 that you can speak to?
BB: Going into 2023, the plan would be to expand something like a Hickory Hills  pilot, learn from that and expand that offering into other communities that we have so that we can open them up for film recycling. … I think at WM, our goal is to be consistent on our acceptable items list. At some point, do we see a world where we can say, ‘Let’s make it easy. Put all your plastics in the bin, and these automated facilities can sort that out.’

We’re not there today, but at some point, that would be a great goal to get to and eliminate the confusion on what I can put in the bin.

Brent Bell is vice president of recycling at Houston-based WM. For more information visit www.wm.com.