The recycling industry has been plagued by transportation issues, whether attempting to convey materials by truck, rail or ship.

In the trucking sector, rates have tripled in some lanes and some recyclers have had to contend with unreliable service. As one executive with a scrap processing company based in the Midwest told me, “Going somewhere for a penny a pound simply doesn’t exist anymore.”

The issues with trucking have been amplified in part because of the pandemic, but the industry’s issues with rail service go back further in time. Recyclers have expressed concerns for some time about increasing demurrage charges, changes in demurrage rules that reduced the time to load or unload before charges begin and increasing rates, to name a few.

“Whether an executive order will help address issues with ocean and rail shipping remains to be seen.”

In April of this year, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, claimed a victory for the recycling industry when the Surface Transportation Board (STB) adopted a Final Rule Establishing Minimum Information Requirements for Class I Demurrage Invoices that had long been sought.

ISRI President Robin Wiener said at the time, “The STB’s rule recognizes that the communication of correct information can help prevent many misunderstandings between rail shippers and carriers.”

However, many recyclers say issues with the Class I railroads persist. Mark, Jason and Brad Lasky, co-owners of Sadoff Iron & Metal Co., the subject of this month’s cover story, mention transportation-related challenges they face, “whether it’s rail and the desire for the railroad industry to keep serving our industry or lack of finding qualified drivers,” Jason Lasky says. The company is looking into buying or renting rail cars because of servicing and availability issues.

In the ocean shipping sector, while profitability is up for 11 of the largest shipping lines, which combined yielded more than $16 billion in earnings before interest and taxes in the first quarter of 2021, according to an assessment of earnings reports by Denmark-based consultancy Sea-Intelligence, the recycling industry has found rates increasing and containers and bookings difficult to secure in certain areas of the U.S.

Whether an executive order President Biden signed in early July will help address issues with ocean and rail shipping remains to be seen, but ISRI responded favorably.

“We applaud President Biden for issuing this important executive order that recognizes the systemic disruptions to our nation’s manufacturing supply chains and directs his administration to take all appropriate actions to help improve our transportation networks,” Wiener said.

She added, “This executive order helps our essential industry fulfill its mission of supplying specification-grade commodities that save energy, protect the environment, conserve natural resources and help combat climate change.”

The proper functioning of global supply chains requires timely and cost-effective transportation. Perhaps this executive order is a step in that direction.

Megan O’Connor

Co-Founder and CEO of Nth Cycle

Increasingly, companies across the U.S. and globally have been developing and investing in new technologies and methods to recycle lithium-ion batteries. Nth Cycle, a metals processing technology company based in Boston, is one such company that has been exploring new ways to recycle lithium-ion batteries in recent years.

Megan O’Connor, founder and CEO of Nth Cycle, says she had the idea for the company while she was doing doctoral work for Duke and Yale universities in 2017. She had the opportunity to attend the Green Electronics Summit hosted by Yale University as a scribe. She says heads of research and development for large electronics companies and semiconductor companies were in attendance at that event.

“As I was sitting there taking notes, I kept hearing over and over again how end-of-life waste management, specifically recycling strategies, just weren’t working today,” she says. “Listening to these pain points from these industry folks really sparked a passion in me to use my background in chemistry and environment engineering to develop the technology to try and solve this and create this clean, yet affordable technology to really recover these materials to generate these new supply chains.”

“Listening to these pain points from these industry folks really sparked a passion in me.”

O’Connor changed her doctoral project to help develop a process to affordably and cleanly recover materials from items such as lithium-ion batteries.

Today, Nth Cycle is focused on using electro-extraction technology to recover metals from end-of-life batteries and electronics, low-grade ore and mine tailings. Since its launch, Nth Cycle has secured $3.2 million in funding from investors led by Boston-based Clean Energy Ventures.

O’Connor offers insights on Nth Cycle’s business model and her goals.

Recycling Today (RT): What was it like starting Nth Cycle a few years ago?

Megan O’Connor (MO): I had just defended my Ph.D. a week before my co-founders and I sat down in a bar in Boston and had a beer and decided to start Nth Cycle. The technology showed such promise, even at the bench scale. So back in 2017, we were really focused on recovering rare earth metals—these really critical metals that are in wind turbines and electric vehicles and really all of the clean energy technologies that will truly enable this energy transition that we’re all really striving for. ... We’ve also looked into a wide variety of other materials, like cobalt, nickel and lithium-ion batteries, as well as mine tailings and raw ore.

RT: How does Nth Cycle’s technology differ from what other battery recyclers are currently doing?

MO: How we’re different from the other is that we’re clean, we’re consistent and we’re very low cost. We have a filtration technology—instead of using harsh acids, or very large, dirty furnaces, we can actually pull these metals out in a much cleaner, more efficient way.

RT: What are your goals for Nth Cycle?

MO: Nth Cycle’s vision is really for a world where all the critical materials needed for this energy transition are already in circulation. It’s our mission to truly enable a low-impact, streamlined supply of these minerals for the energy transition with electro-extraction technology. So, I see Nth Cycle as an add-on technology against all of these players in the industry who collect this material or have resources that are currently untapped because of environmental regulation because the existing technologies are too dirty to use as it stands today. So, we can really bring this new technology to help untap all those resources as well as create this new supply chain.

GP begins operations at new Oregon recycling facility

Georgia-Pacific (GP), Atlanta, has begun operations at its GP Toledo material recovery facility (MRF) in Toledo, Oregon. The MRF has applied GP’s Juno technology, which is designed to recycle highly contaminated recovered fiber and mixed materials. Christer Henriksson, president of Juno Technology at Georgia-Pacific, says GP has been piloting Juno since 2013 at a plant in Savannah, Georgia, and began construction on its Toledo MRF about two years ago.

“The pilot plant was used to prove our concept of recycling municipal solid waste, typically called MSW,” he says.

As of May, the Toledo MRF has been up and running, processing commercial MSW from accounts throughout Oregon. Henriksson says the plant has the capacity to process about 100,000 tons of material per year and has the potential to recycle up to 90 percent of the material that enters the MRF.

Henriksson says the company only needs 10 employees to run the plant, which operates 24/7. The facility uses a technology called “autoclaving,” he says, which is typically used by hospitals to sterilize waste materials. “We use that technology to cook and sanitize the incoming waste.”

After the autoclave, materials are mechanically separated into different commodity streams, such as paper, plastics and metals.

Henriksson says all the MRF’s recovered fiber is consumed by GP’s containerboard mill in Toledo, which is next to the MRF, to manufacture linerboard for corrugated boxes. Other recovered items, such as metals and plastics, are sold in their respective markets.

He says about 10 percent of the MSW that can’t be recovered at the Toledo MRF is sent to landfill. That includes materials such as glass, dirt and fines.

Henriksson says the company is looking to add a second MRF that uses Juno technology in the Northeast United States, a third MRF using the technology in Europe and a fourth location using the technology in Asia. “We plan to start engineering the next two sites before the end of this year,” he says.

“[Juno] is a disruptive technology for the landfill industry,” Henriksson says. “We see there is a lot of demand because it’s very hard to build new landfills. People are shipping their MSW a long way to get to landfills because they are not typically located near cities. But future Juno plants will be built close to where waste is generated, such as large cities,” he explains.

Federal judge terminates Chicago recycler’s lawsuit

A federal judge has dismissed Chicago-based Southside Recycling’s lawsuit against the city of Chicago. Southside Recycling, which has constructed a scrap recycling facility on the city’s southeast side, filed a federal lawsuit in mid-May seeking a court order directing the city of Chicago to issue a large recycling facility permit to the company. The lawsuit alleges the city wrongfully failed to issue the last permit needed for the facility to begin operating, despite acknowledging for months that Southside Recycling had satisfied its requirements.

Southside Recycling and RMG Investment Group LLC filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Chicago against the city of Chicago and Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. The company sought a court order that would direct Arwady to issue the final permit, alleging that the city broke its agreement with RMG and violated the company’s constitutional rights by taking private property without just compensation. The company also sought more than $100 million in damages arising from the permit delay.

U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. rejected Southside Recycling’s claim that its constitutional rights were violated. He writes that the arguments in the dispute are better suited for state court and that the case is terminated.

“Southside Recycling will immediately seek a prompt ruling in state court ordering the city to issue the permit, based on the city’s broken promises and the fact that we have met every requirement imposed by the city’s own rules, which businesses have a right to rely upon,” Southside Recycling states in response to the ruling. “Despite multiple attempts since early May to understand how and when the city intends to proceed, the additional analysis that it is purportedly intending to perform remains undefined and the timing undetermined.”

The company adds that it is “damaging to the environment and the local metal recycling market” that its project is on hold while “the only other shredder in Chicago continues to operate without pollution controls.”

Southside Recycling refiled the lawsuit in Illinois state court July 1.

Triple M acquires Ontario scrap firm

Brampton, Ontario-based Triple M Metal LP has announced the acquisition of Peterborough Iron & Metal (PIM), which operates scrap facilities in Peterborough, Port Hope and Minden, Ontario, in the eastern part of the Canadian province.

“We are excited to bring PIM under the Triple M Metal LP umbrella and leverage our international reach with PIM’s local presence,” states Triple M President Oscar Moniz in a company website posting. “For the time being, the yards will continue to run under their current names.”

Moniz also credits Mark Dickomeit, who has been a partner and owner/operator of PIM for the previous 10 years, for having “grown PIM to be a significant player in eastern Ontario.” He adds, “We are excited to have Mark and his dedicated team join our growing organization. This addition reflects our organization’s commitment to maintaining our position as Ontario’s premier metals recycler.”

Moniz continues, “With a strong customer base and strategically located yards, the PIM acquisition is in line with our short-term and long-term sustainability goals. The additional feeder yards and processing sites further strengthen our presence in Ontario and help to solidify our place as Ontario’s largest scrap metal processor.”

During the previous four decades, Triple M “has evolved into one of the largest independent scrap companies in North America,” he says.

Including the newly acquired PIM sites, Triple M now operates 19 sites in Ontario and 31 in North America. In addition, Triple M’s sister company Matalco is a multilocation consumer of aluminum scrap, producing billet in several melt shop locations in the United States and Canada.