During Plastics Recycling World Expo, industry stakeholders discussed whether federal and state regulations will lead to improved plastics recycling rates.

Increasingly both federal and state lawmakers in the United States have introduced and passed legislation with a goal to reduce pollution, raise recycling rates and increase the use of recycled content in products and packaging.

Th bipartisan Recycling Enhancements to Collection and Yield through Consumer Learning and Education (RECYCLE) Act, introduced in 2019 by Sens. Rob Portman and Debbie Stabenow, has been included as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as of August. The legislation will authorize a federal grant program through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to educate households and consumers about residential and community recycling programs.

In early August, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse introduced the Rewarding Efforts to Decrease Unrecycled Contaminants in Ecosystems (REDUCE) Act to the Senate. That proposed legislation is designed to create a new incentive to recycle plastic and address plastic waste in ecosystems by imposing a 20-cent-per-pound fee on the sale of virgin plastic used in single-use products.

And in June, the U.S. Plastics Pact, a consortium led by The Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact Network, released a national strategy to ensure all plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 with a “Roadmap to 2025” strategy.

Conversations surrounding recycling and sustainability are increasing at both the federal and state levels, but industry stakeholders note that there are both pros and cons to the proposed and enacted legislation. That was the main takeaway during a session titled Industry Debate: Federal and State Regulations: Are They the Key to Improved Recycling Rates that took place during Plastics Recycling World Expo Nov. 3 in Cleveland.

“It is a positive sign that there is increased attention on these issues and that brand owners have a seat at the table to talk about solutions and what could be put forward to achieve some of the targets we’ve set out,” said Stephanie Potter, who leads sustainability strategy and corporate affairs at Nestlé, which has global headquarters in Switzerland.

“Increased attention is good,” Robert Render, business development manager of sustainability at Ravago Recycling, said in response to Potter. “But we’re seeing too many regulations that are punitive, penalizing plastic and isolating plastics. And they are missed opportunities. The legislation needs to be more supportive of the industry to force collaboration between partners—government and industry—to solve problems and not penalize industry."

He continued, “I think there is too much of that going on. That is impacting how the public views plastics. One of the reasons why plastics is everywhere is plastics are a great material to work with. They perform well, they are cost-effective. It seems like we’re being penalized for being the material of choice.”

Steve Alexander, president and chief executive officer at the Washington-based Association of Plastic Recyclers, added that there are pros and cons to legislation surrounding plastics recycling and sustainability. “I think it’s great there’s attention. But, two, I’m very concerned. We have to make sure that once we have this attention of the regulatory process that what they come up with actually solves the problems. We know the legislative mindset is short—they want to put a solution on the table, and it may not work. It’s incumbent upon us to stay committed and focused and make sure solutions actually solve the problems and address the issue of plastics sustainability.”

Some new legislation aims to boost recycling rates, but speakers at the Plastics Recycling World Expo said it will take more than just legislation to improve those rates.

Potter of Nestlé said she does not think there’s “one main driver” to boost recycling rates.

“Brand owners who have stepped up to lead in this space, Nestlé is in this category, has been a driver,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of different groups that have different parts of the solution.”

Alexander added, “I don’t think it’s any coincidence that brand owner commitment has risen dramatically since we’ve come to the conclusion that policy will be a driver in this space. But I think it’s a combination—a combination of the realization that if we don’t do something ourselves, it will be done to us by policy. Then I also think there is a recognition that increased attention to the plastic sustainability problem is an important message to share to consumers, shareholders and employees.”

In addition to legislation driving recycling rates, Render said the markets themselves are helping to boost recycling rates. “The market is really dictating activity investment. This past year, virgin resin prices were out of sight. Recyclers did well because there were gaps in supply. The market drove a lot of activity. … You can’t ignore the market.”

Recycling education also will help increase recycling rates, Potter said, but she noted that there is a lot of confusion when it comes to recyclability. She said there’s increasing awareness among consumers about the need to recycle and education has improved, though. Potter said “circular economy” and “sustainability” will likely become “everyday vernacular” for consumers in the future.

“I think that the industry as a whole has a lot of work to do to improve the image of plastic but educating the consumers to the possibility of plastics in recycling is very important,” Render added.

Panelists added that some federal and state regulations pose some issues for recycling industry players. Render said there is sometimes a “disconnect” between recycled content laws and infrastructure to produce materials to meet demand.

Alexander said he thinks more questions need to be answered when it comes to laws surrounding chemical or advanced recycling, such as what chemical recycling process works best and whether material recovery facilities need to produce separate bales to provide to chemical recycling operations. “Chemical recycling is not, ‘Let’s put everything in one bin, stir it up’ and then we’ve got recycled content.”

Render added, “To me, advanced recycling is a complement to mechanical recycling but not a replacement of mechanical recycling. It needs to have the support that mechanical recycling has traditionally enjoyed, but the technologies need to perform and have to be environmentally responsible. But we can’t pass laws making it impossible to consider advanced recycling.”

Magnetics company points to high ferrous scrap prices as incentive to recover iron and steel material.

Pennsylvania-based magnetic separation equipment producer Eriez is urging waste-to-energy (WTE) industry plant operators to respond to lofty ferrous scrap prices by investing in systems to recover more marketable iron and steel scrap.

Eriez says it has equipment to separate “lucrative amounts of metals from the inbound or residue streams attached to waste-to-energy (WTE) and refuse-derived fuel (RDF) application processes, enabling operators to take full advantage of current conditions where price and demand for steel is surging to record highs.”

Depending on how they are configured, WTE and RDF plants may require different metal recovery techniques since material in each application is vastly different in size and composition, according to Eriez Heavy Industry Market Manager Darrell Milton.

When it comes to recovering metals from bottom ash in WTE applications, Eriez typically recommends two types of equipment: the Eriez P-Rex permanent drum magnet and one or more eddy current separators.

“The P-Rex scrap drum magnet has many advantages over competitive drum magnets,” says Milton. “Most notable of all is its incredible magnetic strength and imperceptibility to heat soak.” Milton says the P-Rex also has a proven track record of providing significant financial benefits for WTE customers. “Eriez’ introduction of the P-Rex magnetic drum into the WTE market has provided our customers a significant increase in ferrous metal recoveries, in some cases over 50 percent,” he says.

Of the current market, Milton says, “Record steel prices bring remarkable opportunities to WTE.”

The eddy current separator handles nonferrous fragments including fines. Its eccentric rotor produces a powerful focused field to deliver unmatched performance.

“Within RDF plants, inbound material is treated pre-burn via shredding, screening and metal separation,” Milton comments. “In this case, Eriez can provide a magnetic separator for ferrous material recovery and an eddy current separator for nonferrous metals recovery.” Milton says the combination produces results with “high metal separation efficiency.”

More information on the Eriez product line for the WTE and RDF markets can be found on this web page. 

Zach Brooks’ second act as owner of the Arizona Worm Farm has him promoting the benefits of vermicomposting for waste reduction, sustainability.

Zach Brooks’ career path has been a bit unorthodox by conventional standards. Brooks, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University, had worked his way up over the course of 30 years to become a partner at a global consulting firm. But after three decades of boardrooms and business travel, Brooks decided it was time for a change. So, in 2016, he did what any middle-aged family man might do under similar circumstances—he decided to give up his cushy corporate gig to start an off-the-grid, zero-waste farm.

While Brooks originally conceptualized selling the fruits and vegetables grown on the farm to pay for its labor, he quickly realized the real value from the farm was in breeding worms for vermicomposting.

“Worms were an integral part of our zero-waste strategy because they could convert garbage into fertilizer and healthy soil and provide a protein source for our hens that we were raising,” he says. “So, I started with worm farming. It turns out that worms, worm castings [manure], and compost, which we make here for the organic farm, are a great revenue source for us. We initially thought we were going to have a farm where we were going to sell fruits and vegetables to pay for the labor that we needed. That’s crazy hard to do in the United States on a 10 acre piece of land like we have, and so we pivoted to worms [for our revenue]. Our goal here is to feed and clothe 10 families on 10 acres using just sunshine, rainwater and other people’s garbage, and worms are a critical element to making that happen.”

Brooks’ Arizona Worm Farm, located in Phoenix, Arizona, has been in operation since 2017.

The farm sells between 40,000 to 60,000 red wiggler worms a week to backyard gardeners who use them in their worm composting bins to convert food waste into nutrient-rich soil.

The farm also sells 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of worm castings per week. Brooks says this natural fertilizer product help repel pests, help plants grow and allow soil to better absorb nutrients under Arizona’s challenging conditions.

Additionally, the farm sells between 150 and 250 yards of compost and raised bed mix per week generated from its hot compost that is composed of horse manure from local stables, food waste, basalt rock dust, and mulch from the city of Phoenix’s landscape waste.

Brooks says that the farm takes in 320 yards of waste materials per week to fuel its operations. Roughly one-third of this material is food waste, one-third is manure and one-third is landscaping waste.

The food waste is mostly derived from a local food packager that bags fruits and vegetables for grocery stores. The byproducts of this produce are shipped to the Arizona Worm Farm to be incorporated into its composting mix. Brooks says that this organic feedstock is ideal for the farm’s operations since it is free of plastics or other contamination. For this reason, the farm doesn’t accept organics from restaurants, residents or other establishments. Also, this waste isn’t packaged or bagged, which alleviates the need to debag the material at the farm, saving both time and labor.

Brooks estimates that, in total, the farm helps divert 32 tons of food waste from landfill every week.

The yard waste from the city of Phoenix is derived from trees, branches and other yard waste the city’s landscapers collect. The city of Phoenix also has a certified green program. Through this program, residents agree to bring clean landscaping waste to the city’s processing facilities, where it is ground, turned once in a composting process, and then sent to the Arizona Worm Farm. This process also helps keep a substantial amount of organic material from ending up in area landfills.

Brooks says the process of raising worms for composting purposes is more labor-intensive than relying on traditional windrow composting.

A shipping container on the farm filled with metal shelves is loaded with bins of soil that contain worms. Brooks and staff work to monitor the containers to ensure optimal breeding conditions. Once the worms are mature, they can be introduced into the compost.

Brooks says that although larger windrow composters are able to produce up to 1,000 times the products the Arizona Worm Farm does, the byproducts of the company’s vermicomposting operations are superior.

“Worms are animals, so the same way you have to manage your herd if you’re a cattle farmer or a flock if you’re a chicken farmer, we manage our worms,” he says. “It’s not quite as simple. There are a couple more moving pieces, but it’s hugely productive.

“We create what we think is the city, and the world’s, best organic soil. We do that using organic material and the microbes that are a byproduct of worms—either live worms or worm castings. The combination of organic material and microbes convert what is in the soil into what the plants need at the point in time that they need them. We don’t use any herbicides or pesticides or chemicals of any kind. We just use organic materials from our composting operation, combined with worm castings, which tends to be hugely microbially active, and get a very, very rich organic soil.”

The difference in the quality of this soil is tangible, Brooks says. He notes that the company’s farmland is richer and able to retain water much better than other land in the area. This means less water is required to maintain operations, which further helps conserve resources.

With areas throughout the region facing severe drought conditions, Brooks says cities might begin to consider adopting more proactive composting and farming operations to both better manage their waste streams and produce healthier soils.

“It would absolutely make sense for cities that are trying to figure out what to do with their waste to create composting and permaculture operations,” he says. “One of the things that we see which is important in the Southwest is that our soils use much less water to produce the same result. Microbially active organic soil will produce a better outcome with much less water. So, cities and residents using these kinds of soils can help reduce their footprint without the same water requirements.”

To help spread the message on the benefits of vermicomposting and organic farming practices, Brooks says that he is helping organize the first countrywide conference for vermicomposting business owners. According to Brooks, the Worm Business Conference will take place January 2022 in Phoenix, and 40 farms are already committed to participate.

Brooks says that through the conference, he hopes to inspire a more local, responsible approach for managing waste.

“We’re going to talk about how to be more efficient and effective, how to make more money using worms and how to reduce the amount of oil-based and chemical-based fertilizers that are used for agriculture,” he says. “We’d like to do that same thing with farmers and market gardeners across the U.S. [and inspire them to use] methodologies that are able to increase their productivity and decrease the amount of money that they spend on fertilizers while producing a healthier, more environmentally friendly soil.

“One of our goals is to continue to help figure that out, and to teach people how to do it. We’re going to start with the worm farmers who are going to help us spread that message, and then we’re going to try and get people who farm in conventional ways to farm in more organically sustainable ways. … This process tends to be more labor-intensive, and fruits and vegetables will cost a little more, but we have to decide as a society if we’re willing to [accept that trade-off]. We think lots of people will.”

This article originally appeared in the October issue of Waste Today. The author is the editor of Waste Today and can be contacted at aredling@gie.net.

Seattle-based firm says it has raised $15 million to further its NuCycl technology.

Seattle-based Evrnu says it has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round to help it “scale and meet the surging demand for its fiber regeneration platform, NuCycl.”

The financing round was led by Los Angeles-based FullCycle Climate Partnethe rs, which also is an investor. “Globally diversified supply chain partners and brands are also joining the round as co-investors,” including South Korea-based Hansae, Denmark-based Bestseller, and PDS Venture, the venture tech portfolio of India-based PDS Multinational Fashions, say the two companies.

“Over the last few years, we have iterated and fine-tuned NuCycl technologies to meet and exceed the quality and performance demands of the luxury industry,” says Stacy Flynn, CEO and co-founder of Evrnu. “We are now proving these technologies at scale, with short-term plans for global expansion.”

The new funding will be used to expand Evrnu’s facilities and operations in South Carolina and provide what the company calls “high volumes of NuCycl fibers to the fashion industry.” Global deployment of NuCycl is one of the goals, says Evrnu, to “meet the scale required to alleviate dependency on virgin resources and create material emissions reductions throughout the fashion value chain.”

Comments Kyle Adkins, a partner at FullCycle, “Brands know that they need to materially address their emissions and that their customers are watching and demanding that they do better. FullCycle is excited to partner with Evrnu to build and deploy true molecular circularity with the capacity and scale to meet the demands of even the largest participants in this global industry.”

Evrnu says its technologies “create a pathway to insert the tens of millions of tons of textile waste that end up in landfills or incinerators every year back into the value chain.” NuCycl depolymerizes textile waste and repolymerizes it into “pristine fibers that are on par or higher quality than the inputs and can be recycled multiple times,” claims the company.

The company says its technologies address the recycling of 90 percent or more of all apparel, meaning Evrnu “is on course to deploy technologies that allow for all textiles to be successfully recycled by 2030.”

“All gold that’s ever been sourced is still in circulation – it gets melted and casted over and over again,” says Christopher Stanev, chief technology officer of Evrnu. “That’s Evrnu’s goal for textile fibers: Our technologies enable them to stay in circulation, while maintaining their performance attributes.”

Taiwanese company says its machine offers “three-in-one” shredding, extruding and pelletizing capabilities.

Tainan City, Taiwan-based YE I Machinery Factory Co. Ltd. says its Plastic Waste Recycling Machine line of equipment offers “three-in-one” shredding, extruding and pelletizing functions in one device.

YE I says its water-cooled Plastic Waste Recycling Machines feature a three-in-one design that combines “the crusher, extruder and pelletizer into one unit, which simplifies the process and also saves labor and space.”

The firm says its machinery line can help produce a wide range of recycled-content resins, including polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polycarbonate (PC), polylactic acid (PLA), expanded polystyrene (EPS), expanded polypropylene (EPP), expanded polyethylene (EPE), nylon plastic (PA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and other resins have been processed by the equipment line.

“Thanks to the experience in the field more than 60 years, YE I has been able to develop low-energy-consumption machines and enhance the machines through custom adjustments,” states the firm.

YE I says one of its customers in Japan had been generating more plastic scrap as it was growing, “so they urgently needed to have two more recycling machine production lines to solve the problem.”  YE I modified its machine’s existing screw design to increase the output and “strengthened the safety design according to the customer’s usage habits, and improved the database programming [so] the machine will automatically calculate the maintenance period of the motor and issue a reminder.”

The Taiwanese company says its plastic recycling machines can be customized to meet the preferences of global customers. More information on the product line is available on this web page.