The recycling programs of Collier Country, Indian River County and Lee County, Florida, have been awarded 2022 Recycle Florida Today Environmental Sustainability Awards for their program.

The Ocala, Florida-based Recycle Florida Today (RFT) organization says the three counties demonstrated noticeable efforts to increase recycling. “The programs displayed an increased awareness of the importance of sustainability and ability to motivate others to maximize their recycling, composting, grass-roots efforts, waste reduction, sustainability efforts and improving their recycling rates through education, outreach and by example,” RFT says.

Sue Flak, Recycling Education and Marketing Coordinator for Indian River County, presented the county’s “community fridge” program during a recent webinar and accepted the award.  The purpose of that program is to reduce food waste, build stronger communities, encourage local artists, and promote equal access to healthy food.

The Fellsmere Fridge program, part of that larger effort, is used to share food at the neighborhood level. It is maintained by a collective of partners from drawn from communities, officials, businesses and individuals.

RFT describes itself as Florida’s state recycling organization and “premier association educating recycling and environmental professionals throughout Florida from both the public, private and nonprofit sectors.”

BlueScope Steel Ltd., based in Australia, has pointed to its scrap-fed North Star electric arc furnace (EAF) mill in Ohio when announcing the release of its 2022 sustainability report. “Our growth and acquisitions in the United States have focused on the circular economy and expanding our coated and painting footprint,” the company says.

One of its most recent recycling-related growth measures has been the acquisition of the former Milliron Recycling shredder yard in Mansfield, Ohio, in August. The prior year, BlueScope North Star acquired the shredders and other ferrous recycling assets of Indiana-based MetalX.

In the early years of this decade, BlueScope also invested heavily in its Ohio North Star operations, undertaking an expansion project that will allow the company to produce an additional 850,000 tons of steel at the site annually.

In its newly released sustainability report, the company highlights the role of recycling in the overall steel industry, writing, “Today, more than 50 percent of the world’s steel is made from obsolete scrap (from end-of-life used products that have been recycled). Across BF-BOF [blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace] steelmaking and EAF steelmaking, this is expected to increase to around 67 percent in 2050 as steel stocks built up over the previous decades reach end of life.”

BlueScope then adds a note of caution, writing, “Unfortunately, current and predicted future demand for steel far exceeds the amount of steel reaching end-of-life, and therefore making its way into the scrap supply chain. Acknowledging that global scrap steel supplies are insufficient to produce enough steel through scrap based EAF steelmaking to meet expected steel demand, steel produced from virgin iron will continue to play a critical role in the future.”

Nonetheless, the company says it is “seeking opportunities to increase scrap recycling in all steelmaking locations,” and writes of its Ohio efforts that its mill there “is strategically located in Delta, Ohio, in a key scrap-rich area near its customers. BlueScope Recycling and Materials [the former MetalX assets], acquired during the year, is a full-service, ferrous scrap metal recycler with one of its two processing facilities adjacent to our North Star BlueScope Steel facility. In August 2022, a third ferrous scrap processing site [Milliron Recycling] was acquired.”

The full 72-page BlueScope 2022 sustainability report data supplement can be found here.

Industrial Service Solutions (ISS), Houston, says it has contracted to install an advanced automobile shredding plant at a major recycling facility in Mexico.

The U.S.-built 7090 shredder will increase the customer’s ferrous metal recycling capacity in response to increased scrap metal demand in Latin America.

ISS will supply the shredder unit, 3,000-horsepower AC electric motor and variable-frequency drive from its Motors Center of Excellence in Houston, where engineering, integrated design and manufacturing are performed.

“Upgrading to the 7090 shredder will enable our client to both increase scrap shredding capacity and process heavier metals,” says Bill Tigner, vice president – Recycling Technologies at ISS. “The 70-inch diameter of the 7090 rotor will deliver 32 percent more hammer impact than the 6090 shredder unit it will replace. The 7090 shredder rotor is built with the same material thickness as our 80-inch mill, offering larger-format durability and performance in the footprint of the smaller current unit.”

Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy, New York City, and the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag have released a guide for retailers adopting reusable bag service models.

The report, “Beyond the Plastic Bag,” shares insights and analysis gathered from collaborative reusable bag pilots conducted in select CVS Health, Target and Walmart stores throughout Northern California in 2021 as part of the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag’s Beyond the Bag pilot studies.

Walmart Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer for Walmart Kathleen McLaughlin calls the effort an “unprecedented platform for connectivity” among the participants in the study.

“The pilots created the space for collective experimentation and provided data-driven insights on the ease, convenience and perceived benefits of the models tested,” she says. “This kind of on-the-ground diligence from pilots is critical to inform what could be next for reuse and where it could fit in a circular economy.”

Approximately 100 billion single-use plastic bags, which are typically made with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) or linear-LDPE film, are used each year in the U.S., most of which end up in landfills. Reuse models can help address single-use plastic packaging waste along with other complementary waste mitigation strategies. As retailers work to respond to the challenge and address the growing number of plastic bag regulations across the U.S., the report provides key findings on what drives an optimal shopper experience and uptake of reuse models.

The following study findings are important to keep in mind when considering the public:

• effective storytelling is foundational for building awareness;
• convenience is imperative when it comes to adoption and sign-up for programs;
• customers are looking for a clear and easy reason to help them reuse; and
• accessible drop-off points and quick confirmation of return help build trust in the reuse system.

Behind the scenes, retailers need to consider that:

• partnering with the right stakeholders matters;
• impact must be measured at every stage; and
• further scaling reuse systems will help catalyze efficiencies.

“Successfully implementing reuse models on the ground and accelerating their growth takes unprecedented collaboration. Since 2018, the Center for the Circular Economy has been convening competitors to address complex material challenges and advance circular solutions, including reuse,” Managing Director of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners Kate Daly says. “This collaboration with the nation’s largest retailers to test and pilot reusable bag solutions across multiple stores is a critical step toward reducing single-use plastic bag waste. Iterative testing and data-driven decision-making of reuse systems can help avoid unintended consequences like insufficient recapture of reusable packaging or the one-to-one replacement of single-use plastics with ‘reusables.’ We hope that this report on the Beyond the Bag initiative serves as inspiration for forward-thinking organizations looking to bring reuse to the next level.

Beyond the Bag Challenge

The Beyond the Bag Challenge was designed as a competition to identify the most promising sustainable alternatives to plastic bag use. The consortium received about 450 submissions in the challenge and has named the following winners in no particular order:

• ChicoBag, Chico, California, which eliminates a common pain point for consumers: remembering reusable bags. Their service enables customers to borrow bags on-site as part of the sharing economy;
• GOATOTE, Woodbury, Minnesota, which features a  kiosk system that allows consumers to access clean, reusable bags anywhere a kiosk is found; 
• Returnity, Brooklyn, New York, which designs and manufactures reusable shipping bags and boxes for products already on the market and provides the e-commerce and delivery packaging system that powers how these bags and boxes are used; 
• Eon, New York City, created the CircularID Protocol which facilitates data exchange across the circular economy, creating a transparent tracking system to understand how bags are being utilized across the value chain;
• Fill it Forward, Guelph, Ontario, which created a tag and app that connects to the reusable bag consumers already own, allowing them to track environmental impact, earn rewards, and help give nutritious food to people in need;
• SmartC, Charlotte, a solution co-created by 99Bridges and Envision Charlotte, incentivizes shoppers with rewards in a fun, engaging way every time they reuse their shopping bags;
• Domtar, Fort Mill, South Carolina, which is developing a new bio-based, recyclable material of 100 percent cellulose fiber with stretchable and more durable properties;
• PlasticFri, Stockholm, which transforms agricultural waste, non-edible plants and other renewable resources into bio-based products, has created a starch-based compostable bag for consumers; and
• Sway, Berkeley, California, which creates replacements for traditional plastic derived from seaweed. Their bags are bio-based, compostable and designed to be carbon-negative.

Over the next year, the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag will continue conducting research and in-market testing of designs and innovative bag solutions that can reduce single-use plastic bag waste. This work aims to inform the viability of solutions in different contexts, as well as the full potential of solutions to replace plastic bags as the dominant method of getting goods home.