WasteExpo 2021: Considering the future of recycling

When contemplating the future of recycling, panelists during the WasteExpo 2021 session Nothing Wasted: The Future of Recycling – Lessons Learned From the Past predicted that regulation will be among the factors playing a more prominent role.  

Kate Bailey, policy and research director at Eco-Cycle in Boulder, Colorado, said the pledges that consumer packaged goods companies are making to include more recycled content in their packaging will drive the further adoption of bottle bills in the U.S.   

Michael Timpane, a partner and vice president at the consulting firm RRS, which is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said, “There is no doubt there will be more regulation.” 

He said he also expected to see more uniformity in labeling and material restrictions that favor widely recyclable plastics.  

Timpane also pointed to the ongoing effort to remove weight from packaging. Because of this lightweighting, it takes more units to make a ton of material, which also means that more processing is involved, he said. “The cost per unit has to go up; it cannot go down.” 

Chaz Miller, CEO of Miller Recycling Associates, Washington, said, “There are more purposes to a package than to be recycled. Recyclability is an important function,” he added, “but the most important is protecting the product. The recycling system is always playing catch-up.” 

Miller suggested that complex packaging that is difficult to recycle might be the better choice if it reduces food waste that might occur if less protective but simpler packaging were used. “We need to get more serious about what we need out of packaging.”   

He added, “If you hang climate change on recycling, then you have to support plastic packaging because of the food waste that it avoids.”   

Bob Cappadona, vice president of Casella Resource Systems, headquartered in Rutland, Vermont, and Miller agreed that improving recycling in the U.S. will hinge more on behavior change than on technological innovation, whereas Bailey said innovation would play the more significant role.  

Miller questioned the delay in data reporting regarding the plastics recycling rate and the overall U.S. recycling rate, noting that the paper recycling rate suffers from no such delay. “Why does it take a year longer to get data on plastics recycling? EPA’s data is even older. We make policy based on old data,” he said. “We need to get politicians out of the data. We don’t need layers of irrelevance second-guessing the numbers.”   

When it comes to promising material recovery facility (MRF) technology, Cappadona said robotics were an obvious choice, citing the difficulty MRF operators have finding laborers. “I don’t think it’s a front-line sorter yet,” he said. “We use it in the back end to capture anything that may have been missed or hidden in the process.” 

He added that optical sorters and disc screens also will continue to evolve.   

Timpane said MRFs are seeing more small format boxes as e-commerce grows, saying an additional sort is needed to prevent that material from going to residue. MRFs are adding secondary sorting on their container lines using optical sorters to capture smaller old corrugated containers (OCC) as well as cartons or polypropylene plastics if the sorters can do two ejects. 

Cappadona said existing screening technology also is being modified to better capture these small boxes by changing the spacing of the rotating discs from 12 to 8 inches.  

He also noted the growing use of vision identification systems that can analyze a MRF’s residue to identify items that were missed during sorting. “Most of us can take advantage of that.”   

The growth in e-commerce, Bailey said, also is having an effect on packaging more generally. Without the need for packaging to make a product stand out on a shelf, some manufacturers are reconsidering its use.  

Timpane said the role of the MRF is changing. “It’s becoming a lab” to test how materials and packaging progress through sorting systems because brands want to be able to claim that their packaging is recyclable.  

If extended producer responsibility gains traction, as some of the panelists predicted, MRFs may be asked to do more tracking on behalf of brands. “How is a MRF going to do a good job of that?” Timpane questioned.  

“And who’s going to pay for that?” Bailey asked.  

“Everyone in this room is going to pay for it,” Miller said. “Producers will pass these costs on to you. You cannot avoid that economic reality. Producers don’t have a magic money machine besides all of us.”   

While the future of recycling remains to be seen, Timpane reminded the attendees that one lesson the industry has learned in recent years is that recycling is a “really resilient system.”   

WasteExpo was June 28-30 in Las Vegas.