The organization recently released the results of its 2021 study which indicated the vast majority of Americans have access to paper and paperboard recycling programs or services.
The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, recently released the results of several studies that look into access to paper and paperboard recycling, containerboard production and old corrugated container (OCC) consumption in 2021—all of which showed mostly positive results despite challenges to the recycling industry during the course of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
During a briefing on the studies’ findings, members of the AF&PA discussed the results and offered a look into how the paper industry is addressing issues like access to recycling, sustainability and consumer education.
The AF&PA released preliminary 2021 data from U.S. paper and paperboard mills indicating record containerboard production. According to the report, total containerboard production in 2021 increased 5.6 percent compared with 2020—the ninth increase in the past 10 years. In a second report released this month, the organization says mills consumed 24.3 million tons of old corrugated containers (OCC) in 2021, the highest level ever reached by the industry and a 26 percent increase over the last decade. “This show that the efforts of diligent consumers recycling paper every day and our industry’s commitment to promote sustainable practices work together as a powerful force to achieve great things,” said Terry Webber, vice president industry affairs at AF&PA, during a briefing Jan. 25.
“In total, nearly 33 million tons of recycled paper was used in manufacturing at U.S. paper mills last year—the highest level in over a decade,” he added. “We did it in the extraordinarily challenging environment of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to a resilient industry and highly engaged consumers. Consumer engagement would not be as high as it is without widely accessible community recycling programs.”
The reports led to the release of the group’s latest study: The 2021 AF&PA Access to Recycling Study. Since 1994, the organization has performed a series of national surveys to measure the extent and track the growth of access to community paper and paperboard recycling. The latest study conducted by consulting firm Resource Recycling Systems, or RRS, Ann Arbor, Michigan, was performed as an update to the previous study done in 2014.
The study measured curbside and drop-off community recycling programs provided through municipal or county governments, organized via contract or franchised through a private hauler or available to residents via subscription services or privately operated drop-offs. The definition of a recycling program varied slightly from the previous study, which did not include subscription recycling programs or privately operated drop-offs.
“Our goal with this study is to help inform our stakeholders about how to maintain and advance our market-leading recycling rates,” Webber said.
Items such as corrugated cardboard, mail, newspapers, office paper, magazines, paperboard boxes with and without poly coatings, paper bags, liquid packaging cartons and pizza boxes all were reported to have a consumer access rate of 60 percent or more.
Since the 2014 study, 79 percent of Americans now have access to residential curbside services—an increase of more than 14 million people. But overall, the study found a 2 percent decrease in the percentage of the U.S. population with access to recycling—particularly paper and paperboard collection—either curbside, drop-off or both, and the biggest change recorded was in access to drop-off recycling. In 2014, 81 percent of the U.S. population had access to drop-off recycling whereas in 2021 the estimate decreased to 55 percent.
The decline seems alarming, but the research team found the majority of the decline in drop-off access occurred in communities that also have access to curbside services, and the suspension of drop-off recycling could be because of cutting costs or temporary suspensions of services arising from COVID-19.
“We think about all of the COVID-driven economic disruptions and widespread changes in consumer behavior that we experienced in the country over the past couple of years, [and] I think that's a remarkable achievement,” said Brian Hawkinson, executive director of recovered fiber for AF&PA.
He added, “I think it's encouraging we've seen in the data that communities continue to offer residential curbside collection to their consumers. That tells us that they're prioritizing that among the tough decisions that they've had to make during the pandemic about which community services to provide, they’re prioritizing recycling. And that's exciting.”
Hawkinson also addressed issues on the consumer side of paper recycling and stressed education as a tool to help improve paper recycling rates. “That is an ongoing issue,” he said. “We recognize that there's a lot of needs that we can be engaged in…educating consumers, not only about the importance of recycling, how important it is for the industry and the environment, but what they can do individually. … We think that the systems are in place. We hope the messaging is going to get to consumers [and we] are going to do everything we can to help make that happen as well.”
Currently, no exact figures are available on the amount of fiber that flows through the residential collection stream versus commercial or industrial streams, but Hawkinson estimated that approximately 40 to 45 percent of the total amount recovered fiber that gets to mills comes through the residential collection stream. “That’s why it is so important that we engage communities, help educate consumers because a lot of raw material that the mills need comes to that collection stream,” he said.
Since 2019, the paper industry has planned or announced approximately $5 billion in manufacturing and infrastructure investments by next year, according to the AF&PA, which it said will increase the amount of recovered paper used by U.S. paper and paperboard mills by approximately 8 million tons—a 25 percent increase over 2020 levels. This includes new mills and new paper machines, and existing mills and converting existing machines. “It doesn’t cover other innovative things that our members are doing on research and development, product development—things like innovative barrier coatings to improve the recyclability of products and … processes they’re piloting to help access additional fiber and turn it into new products,” Webber said.
The AF&PA also has established five sustainability goals through its “Better Practices, Better Planet 2030” initiative: reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, advance a circular value chain, strive for zero workplace injuries, drive water stewardship and advance more resilient U.S. forests. The organization says its members already have reduced GHG emissions by more than 23 percent from its 2005 baseline, which surpassed its previous “Better Practices, Better Planet 2020” goal.
“‘Better Practices, Better Planet’ is a commitment to clear and measurable progress towards goals that address the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic and social factors,” said AF&PA President and CEO Heidi Brock. “And as we celebrate our accomplishments, we are also working to advance the sustainability of our industry even further—to deliver more sustainable products for a more sustainable future.
She added, “This builds on previous achievements to advance the paper and wood products industries' leadership in sustainability."
The new facility will be co-located on Ultium Cells' battery cell manufacturing megafactory in Warren, Ohio.
Li-Cycle Holdings Corp., a Toronto-based lithium-ion battery recycler, has announced it will operate its sixth and largest lithium-ion battery recycling spoke facility at the Ultium Cells battery cell manufacturing megafactory site in Warren, Ohio.
In May 2021, Ultium announced an agreement with Li-Cycle to recycle up to 100 percent of the scrap generated from battery cell manufacturing.
Ultium Cells is a joint venture between General Motors Corp. (GM), Detroit, and LG Energy Solution. The $2.3 billion manufacturing facility is currently under construction and expected to be operational early next year. Li-Cycle says this new recycling facility continues its focus on growing its spoke-and-hub network in North America.
“Building this spoke facility alongside Ultium Cells’ plant is expected to substantially optimize costs and logistics as we transform manufacturing scrap from the plant into highly valuable material using our unique, sustainable and fit-for-purpose approach," says Ajay Kochhar, president, CEO and co-founder of Li-Cycle.
Li-Cycle’s new facility supports its previously announced multiyear agreement to process the battery manufacturing scrap from Ultium Cells’ factory. Ultium Cells will construct a new building for Li-Cycle’s facility, and Li-Cycle will install and operate its spoke technology and equipment after construction is complete, providing on-site conversion of battery manufacturing scrap to intermediate products.
According to Li-Cycle, it expects the Ohio facility to reduce the costs associated with moving and handling battery manufacturing scrap and will be optimized for the particular types of scrap generated at the Ultium Cells plant.
The Ohio facility will have the capacity to process up to 15,000 tons of scrap and battery materials per year, bringing Li-Cycle’s total global recycling capacity to 55,000 tons of lithium-ion battery input per year, the company says. The primary output of the spoke facility will be black mass which will be converted into battery-grade materials at its hub facility in Rochester, New York, which began construction last year to increase processing capacity.
“Our collaboration with Li-Cycle is an instrumental step in improving the sustainability of our components and manufacturing processes,” says Kevin Kerr, Ultium Cells’ Ohio plant director. “This facility is another bold step forward in our sustainability journey here at Ultium Cells.”
Earlier this week, Li-Cycle announced it was forming a joint venture to build a battery recycling facility in Norway—the company's first outside North America.
The joint venture will use Honeywell’s UpCycle Technology to transform end-of-life plastics into recycled polymer feedstock that can be used to create new plastics.
Honeywell, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, has announced the formation of a second joint venture to deploy its UpCycle Process Technology to chemically recycle end-of-life plastics into polymer feedstock that can be used to produce new plastic. The company is partnering with Houston-based Avangard Innovative to build an advanced recycling plant in Waller, Texas.
In November 2021, Honeywell announced its partnership with Sacyr, a global engineering and services company headquartered in Madrid that has operations in more than 20 countries worldwide. Honeywell and Sacyr’s joint venture is planned for Andalucía, in southern Spain. Like Honeywell’s partnership with Avangard, that facility also will be able to process 30,000 metric tons of mixed plastics annually, with production expected to begin in 2023. Carrie Eppelheimer, chief commercial officer at Honeywell Sustainable Technology Solutions, declines to say what the expected output of the system will be, adding, “I know we have high yields.”
Avangard Innovative provides waste management and recycling services to businesses and mechanically recycles low-density and linear-low-density polyethylene film in Houston and Waller. It will be the first U.S. company to deploy Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology, with production anticipated to begin in 2023, Honeywell says.
“The UpCycle Process Technology expands the types of plastics that can be recycled to include waste plastic that would otherwise go unrecycled, enabling Honeywell to play a key role in driving a circular plastics economy,” says Vimal Kapur, president and chief executive officer of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies.
Honeywell says that when its technology is used with mechanical recycling and other chemical recycling processes, along with improvements to collection and sorting, it potentially can increase the amount of postuse plastic that can be recycled to 90 percent.
“Working with Honeywell on a joint advanced recycling plant allows Avangard Innovative to reinforce its mission to preserve and protect the environment by targeting zero waste to landfill,” says Rick Perez, CEO of Avangard Innovative. “The Honeywell solution employs a modular approach to plant design, enabling a straightforward deployment and installation while striking the right balance between economy of scale and amount of waste plastic generated locally.”
Eppelheimer says Honeywell has a history of commercializing sustainable technology, particularly in the oil and gas and petrochemical markets. That commercialization includes Solstice, low-global-warming-potential hydrofluoroolefin refrigerants, aerosols, solvents and blowing agents, and Ecofining, a process that converts nonedible natural oils, animal fats and other waste feedstocks into Honeywell Green Diesel and Honeywell Green Jet Fuel.
She says the company’s Ecofining technology is more than a decade old. Similar to what the company is doing with end-of-life plastics, the process takes what otherwise would be considered waste and converts it into “a viable drop-in renewable fuel that reduces greenhouse gas emissions 60 to 80 percent or more.”
She adds, “That experience showed us how to engage different parts of the marketplace.”
Honeywell recognizes that waste management and recycling companies will be key to the successful commercialization of UpCycle Process Technology, Eppelheimer says. “But we see that it needs to go a step further where we need to partner with them.” This realization has led to the formation of the joint ventures with Sacyr and Avangard Innovative.
She says companies such as these “bring their expertise on the variability of waste, the collection of waste, the sortation of waste,” while Honeywell understands “the conversion of the molecules, the molecule management, contaminant management.” Honeywell also has existing partnerships with the downstream petrochemical partners that will consume the products generated by the process.
“Being able to do this through a joint venture, where both of us are owning and operating [it], we will learn and accelerate the growth of the industry through that approach,” Eppelheimer adds.
The Waller plant, which will be approximately the size of two football fields, likely is the first in the Avangard joint venture. Eppelheimer says Avangard Innovative is looking to expand the technology across all its plants throughout the United States. “It also has operations across nine other countries. And in all of those cases, it complements their existing mechanical recycling infrastructure,” she says.
Avangard’s customers include consumer packaged goods companies and big-box retailers that generate considerable volumes of packaging films. The company is bringing its knowledge of these materials to the partnership. The joint venture also is allowing the company to expand the materials it can collect and recycle in-house.
Eppelheimer says mechanical recycling has “limitations” that can be addressed through chemical recycling, allowing Avangard to increase its clients’ recycling rates.
Avangard Innovative is “effectively and efficiently” recycling LDPE and LLDPE film currently, she adds. UpCycle Process Technology will allow the company to recycle “lower quality films and packaging and polystyrene materials and other types of materials.”
Avangard’s Perez adds, “Avangard Innovative's purpose is to achieve a world without waste. Our current mechanical recycling capabilities can take us so far in the quest to achieve ‘zero-waste-to-landfill’ because there are different types of plastic and other materials that can only be recycled through chemical processes.
"Chemical recycling breaks materials down on a molecular level so they can be recycled as new materials with high quality and performance properties, which can be used in any application," he continues. "By adding chemical recycling capabilities to our already industry-leading mechanical recycling, we will expand the amount of waste material that can be recycled, diverting as much as 90 percent of waste from landfills and our environment."
Perez says the joint venture with Honeywell "seemed a natural and powerful partnership as we continue to close the loop on our circular economy models. Honeywell's UpCycle Process Technology adds tremendous value to our current collection, sorting and transformation processes and helps us leverage the strength of our supply chain and offer manufacturers access to more recycled materials.”
Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology was created within Honeywell’s Sustainable Technology Solutions (STS) business, which is part of Honeywell UOP. The company started looking into advanced recycling in 2019, Eppelheimer says, in response to growing demand to increase plastics recycling.
She adds that the company’s 100 years in molecular management meant it could contribute to a global solution. Its chemical recycling process is based on pyrolysis, which uses heat in the absence of oxygen to break down polymers.
The technology produces 77 percent less CO2 emissions than incineration or landfilling, she adds, and the resulting product can be used in the production of new plastics at a 25 percent blend rate.
Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology is an end-to-end solution, Eppleheimer says, that includes pretreatment, contaminant management and pyrolysis.
According to the company, its technology produces “high-quality recycled polymer feedstock” that “needs less hydrotreating or preprocessing, resulting in higher blend limits and greater recycled plastic production while displacing fossil feedstock and preventing conventional waste handling.”
Given the volume of film that Avangard will be processing with the technology, Eppelheimer says some “minor” modifications could need to be made to the design of the system’s pretreatment. “But, generally speaking, it is still an end-to-end solution pretreatment plus pyrolysis as part of that operation,” she adds.
Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology can handle mixed plastics, though some polymers must be limited.
“PET (polyethylene terephthalate) in too large of an amount becomes contamination,” Eppleheimer says. “We can handle some amounts of PET, particularly because of our contaminant management, which we think is a differentiator for us from other technologies we've seen to date on the market. Similarly with PVC (polyvinyl chloride). PVC creates chlorines, for example, which is very undesirable in the petrochemical processing industry. We can actually take more PVC in on the front end … than others we’re seeing on the marketplace.”
She adds that the technology can handle as much as 4 percent PVC and 20 percent polystyrene.
Eppelheimer says Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology is designed for the greatest carbon yield. “We've created a full-range product for the petchem industry that allows for the highest amount of plastic back to plastic as opposed to having co-products that would be like a waxy product or something that gets converted into fuels,” she says.
The contaminant management aspect of the technology addresses nonplastics, such as metals, as well as different types of chemicals and additives that might be on packaging and the chlorine in PVC, for example. Each aspect of the process has contaminant management, from pretreatment to pyrolysis to postpyrolysis, Eppelheimer notes.
She adds that the technology is modular “to enable speed and simplicity of operation, scale-up and consistency of operation.”
Honeywell’s technology also offers lower greenhouse gas emissions than comparable technologies that have been commercialized to date, Eppelheimer adds.
“Chemical recycling is a critical part of the solution” for ending plastic waste in the environment and reducing CO2 emissions globally," she says. “We're commercializing UpCycle Process Technology to help meet that vision. It is just one of a portfolio of sustainable technologies at Honeywell. Our designs are focused to deliver greater yield of plastic to plastic, to handle higher levels of contamination to handle the variation that just naturally is going to exist in waste and to have not only a modular design but to be able to provide the services necessary so that waste management companies can expand into this new and emerging industry and do so while lowering greenhouse gas emissions.”
The facility will make rubberized mulch from recycled scrap tires.
Liberty Tire Recycling, a tire recycling services provider headquartered in Pittsburgh, has announced plans to open a new manufacturing facility this February in Sanford, North Carolina. The company says the new facility will produce rubberized mulch made from recycled scrap tires.
According to a news release from Liberty Tire Recycling, the plant will create 30 new jobs in the area.
“Liberty is excited to make positive economic and environmental impacts in the region,” says Liberty CEO Thomas Womble. “A new Liberty facility means fewer scrap tires in the waste stream and more jobs for hardworking North Carolinians.”
As part of the company’s commitment to focus on sustainability, Liberty says it also appointed Amy Brackin to serve as its vice president of sustainability to develop an environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy.
“Our new rubber mulch facility in Sanford is in direct response to consumer acceptance of rubber mulch as a sustainable alternative to wood mulch,” Brackin says. “Our North American retail partners recognize and appreciate our sustainability story and how it positively impacts their value chain.”
Liberty Tire Recycling recycles about 190 million tires annually, reclaiming about 3 billion pounds of rubber each year. The company uses recycled rubber to make rubber-based products that are sold at 15,000 retail locations across North America.
Both Senate and House committees will vote on two bills related to catalytic converter thefts in the state.
Lawmakers in Washington state are scheduled to vote on two bills related to catalytic converter theft. According to a report from The Seattle Times, a spike in catalytic converter thefts in the state have prompted state lawmakers to address the issue. The Seattle Times reports that there were 241 reported catalytic converter thefts for the first half of 2021.
Washington Senate Bill 5495, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Wilson and introduced Dec. 6, 2021, would add precious metals to a list of transactions that scrap metal businesses must record. Washington House Bill 1815, sponsored by Rep. Cindy Ryu and introduced Jan. 6, would create a task force to review state laws related to catalytic converter theft and develop recommendations for the future. It also would establish a pilot project through the Washington State Patrol to put identifying information on people’s catalytic converters so they can be tracked. Both bills are scheduled for committee votes Jan. 27.
Some industry proponents expressed opposition to SB 5495 during a Jan. 25 public hearing, including the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). Holly Chisa, representing ISRI’s Pacific Northwest Chapter as a lobbyist, said that it is already illegal under current law for scrap yards to purchase stolen material. She said scrap yard operators are required to document purchases of personal metal property and maintain those records for five years. Chisa added that she prefers HB 1815 to SB 5495.