When it comes to the most popular fast-food restaurants, there’s McDonald’s and then there’s everybody else.

According to data from QSR magazine, McDonald’s U.S. stores accounted for $40.41 billion in sales in 2019. The next highest were Starbucks ($21.55 billion), Chick-fil-A ($11 billion), Taco Bell ($11 billion) and Burger King ($10.3 billion).

With almost double the sales of the next biggest player in the market, it’s easy to see why the burger chain heavyweight recently sought out a way to more effectively manage its waste.

Specifically, McDonald’s began heavily investing in Compology’s dumpster monitoring cameras and sensors at locations across the country—mostly within the last year—to better track its waste and recycling generation.

Compology, which is a San Francisco-based startup that has been manufacturing dumpster-mounted cameras and sensors since 2013, allows operators to monitor the contents of their waste containers to determine fullness, required pickup intervals, and contamination. Through these AI-powered devices, customers can be alerted via message when the technology detects that foreign materials have been placed where they don’t belong, such as in the case of trash bags being thrown into a dumpster dedicated to cardboard recycling. These devices also allow generators to only schedule waste pickups when their containers have reached capacity, reducing unnecessary trips (and costs) from waste haulers.

According to Compology founder and CEO Jason Gates, McDonald’s has locations throughout the U.S. using its services, estimating that roughly 10 percent of all locations currently feature the company’s monitoring devices.

In a recent interview with CNN, Gates discussed a specific example of how the company’s cameras were leveraged at one Las Vegas-area McDonald’s location to notify workers when the wrong materials were placed into a recycling container.

"Once we saw the bags of trash go inside the cardboard containers, we sent a notification to the people on-site via text message, letting them know that they should remove it before the truck comes the next morning and telling them that putting trash in the recycling container is a form of contamination, which they should not do in the future," he said.

Because of this functionality, Gates says Compology devices can reduce contamination in the recycling stream by as much as 80 percent.

Brent Bohn, who owns dozens of McDonald's restaurants throughout Las Vegas and Phoenix, told CNN that the company’s use of Compology devices has been instrumental in keeping his locations’ recycling dumpsters free of waste.

"The cameras have really streamlined that for us and provided accountability for us, but also for our suppliers and the haulers that we work with," Bohn said.

In total, Gates says Compology’s cameras have recorded more than 80 million images from the 162,000 cameras it has installed to date. Because these cameras get better at detecting what is, and isn’t, contamination the more data they process, users benefit from these systems continuously getting smarter.

"The more images we get of the inside of dumpsters, the more accurate we can be," Gates said.

Gates says that its service costs between $10 and $20 per month per dumpster, but that it generally saves companies thousands of dollars per dumpster per year on waste hauling costs by reducing unnecessary waste pickups and fines from contaminated loads.

Specifically pertaining to McDonald’s, Gates says the company is seeing about 14 times the ROI of the technology due to these savings.

With the potential for such ROI, and the continued push for more sustainability-focused operations among major businesses, Gates says he projects adoption of the company’s waste solutions to become accelerated in the year ahead. The company's customer base currently includes Fortune 1,000 companies such as ADT Security, Nordstrom and Capital One.

“We’ve been seeing great success in the quick-service restaurant (QSR) segment with McDonald’s and many other top brands, and we predict we’ll build on that momentum in 2021, as well,” he says. 

Hal Nowell, director of sales for Mississippi-based Taylor International, has announced the addition of four new dealerships in the Latin American and Caribbean region. The forklift manufacturer has added dealers in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Suriname.

The new dealer in Costa Rica is the Larce Group, while IMEQ Dominicana, based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, has been added to the Taylor dealer network in that nation. In South America, a new alliance with two different affiliates of Caribbean Welding Supplies Limited (the CWSL Group) will provide Taylor with a dealership presence in Guyana and Suriname

“The Dominican Republic is a very significant and active market in the Caribbean and extremely important to Taylor International,” says Nowell. “We made it a priority to have a dealer that could provide our existent and new customers with first-class service in this market. IMEQ shares the same commitment to high standards as the Taylor brand, and we are excited to welcome them to the Taylor family of dealers.”

Of the Larce Group in Costa Rica, Nowell says, “Larce’s business capabilities, high standards, and exceptional reputation in the industrial equipment sector were among the main reasons we chose them to represent Taylor in Costa Rica.” Nowell describes Larce Group as a family business that was founded in 1949.

The CWSL Group was founded in Trinidad & Tobago in 1994 and is described by Taylor International as a provider of industrial, construction and agricultural equipment sales, service and rentals to both the public and private sectors. “We are excited about the opportunity to expand our footprint in South America through our relationship with CWSL Group of Companies,” Nowell says. “With the recent oil finds and the mining sector growth in both countries, we realize how imperative it is to have a Taylor presence in the region.”

Taylor International is a 94-year-old company that says it “serves the world with the most dependable, longest-lasting, and most cost-effective material handling equipment.”

Overall, 2021 is off to a good start for recovered paper markets. Pricing has remained steady, if not risen, for almost all recovered paper grades. Brokers and material recovery facility (MRF) operators say paper mills all over the world are continuing to request more recovered paper. And generation has not slowed too much as of the first week of January.

“There is robust demand,” a broker with several U.S. offices says. “Demand for containerboard is crazy right now. There are many mills that are sold out for four to six months.”

Demand is especially hot for old corrugated containers (OCC). A broker based on the West Coast says he’s doubtful OCC pricing will decline in the near-term future. “There’s too much demand for it. The paper mills [in the Pacific Northwest] are running in the mid- to high 90 percent range. There is new capacity coming online that will use more corrugated.”

He adds that box demand has increased, as well. While uncertain what supply and demand conditions will look like the second half of the year, he says, “In general, I’m bullish on corrugated for the first half of 2021.”

Several recovered paper brokers have reported that export markets are a little stronger than domestic markets for OCC. Axel Iglesias of Deerfield Beach, Florida-based 4G Recycling Inc. says India, Latin America and other Asian countries are ordering a great deal of OCC right now.

Mixed paper pricing is much stronger than it was one year ago. Bill Keegan of Shakopee, Minnesota-based Dem-Con Cos. says he’s happy to see domestic mixed paper prices above the $30 per ton range. “I never thought $35 per ton [for mixed paper] was good, but from where it was last year, yes, that is good.”

While pricing and demand for most recovered paper grades are strong, the availability of shipping containers and trucking continues to be problematic as of mid-January.

Sources say many sailings have been canceled or delayed. The broker with several offices in the U.S. says export logistics are “extremely scarce and complex.”

“Containers are hard to get,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what you pay for freight; you can’t get enough containers.”

Aside from transportation-related concerns, many brokers and recyclers say they are optimistic about recovered paper markets for the first quarter of the year. New capacity also is coming online that will help keep prices up and materials moving. The Northeast Recycling Council (NERC), Brattleboro, Vermont, released an update to its “Summary of Announced Increased Capacity to Use Recycled Paper” report in mid-January, highlighting 28 expansion projects in North America that will help boost recovered paper demand in the U.S. NERC reported that nine of the 28 expansion projects have been completed.

The positive outlook for recovered paper is welcome news for many in the recycling industry, especially as many were concerned that China’s exit from the marketplace Jan. 1 could have an adverse effect on recovered paper demand and pricing.

“I think we, and other exporters and traders, were bracing for this collapse when China backed out,” the broker with several U.S. offices adds. “China dropped out without much of a word. And the number of boxes that people needed did not change.”

Iglesias adds that he was surprised yet relieved China’s exit did not disrupt recovered paper markets as had been anticipated. “That was a big surprise for most of us. We all thought it would be a price drop. I think what this shows is that most people have established non-China markets.”

In hindsight, Keegan says he thinks the long-term impacts of China’s Green Fence and National Sword policy have positively helped recyclers to offer mills higher quality recovered paper.

“Our industry as a whole has a higher quality product on the fiber side than we had three to five years ago,” he says. “We’re going to start to see the benefits of that as domestic markets can consume higher quality products. We’ve made improvements to processing equipment. Is recycling more expensive to make better product? Yes. But we’re making a better product and can consume a better product than if this hadn’t occurred. We’re a cleaner, better, more efficient industry.”