Oregon city launches recycling demonstration project

The Pacific Northwest Secondary Sorting Demonstration Project, a 60-day recycling demonstration project, launched in Portland, Oregon, June 19. The project aims to demonstrate how a wider range of materials can be captured from the curbside recycling stream, the Plastics Industry Association (Plastics), Washington, says.

The project involves installing a portable, secondary sorting system at the Far West Recycling material recovery facility (MRF), which is being provided by Concord, California-headquartered Titus MRF Services. 

Selected materials from four regional MRFs will be further sorted using this system, creating six additional streams of recyclables. It will be managed by Plastics with funding from the American Chemistry Council, Americas Styrenics, Berry Global, Carton Council, LyondellBasell and Greater Portland’s Metro government agency.  

“MRFs across the country are doing their best to extract value and marketable commodities for domestic markets, but many are technologically limited in what they can recover and sort for,” says Kim Holmes, vice president of sustainability at Plastics. “With this project, the funders hope to show what is possible when secondary sorting capability is brought into a region to further sort that valuable material, sending it to market rather than the landfill.”

The materials collected, which include a wide range of packaging forms, types of plastics and gable-top and aseptic cartons, will be measured, sorted and marketed to show how the efficiencies and economics of recycling can be positively shifted with added secondary sorting capabilities.

The data collected through this project can help inform communities across the U.S. about the new streams of material that could be captured from their curbside programs, Plastics says. For the funders of the project, creating new streams of valuable recycled materials will help them, and many others meet the growing postconsumer recycled (PCR) material demand.  

Roy Brower, director of regional waste programs for Metro, a regional government agency serving the greater Portland metropolitan area, says, “Metro is working with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, local recyclers and others to ensure that the region has a strong and resilient recycling system in the future. Metro is supporting this demonstration project because it will test a potential innovative sorting approach that could increase recycling.”

"Titus MRF Services is excited to work with the Portland Area MRFs,” says Mike Centers, founder and president of Titus MRF Services. “Together we will use the portable sorting system to demonstrate sorting technologies, conduct material audits and use that data to learn how best to sort more materials placed in the recycling bin by the area’s homeowners.”