On Wednesday, the Northeast Recycling Council continued their virtual event, Seeking Circularity with Non-Traditional Solutions with a focus on DE&I, agricultural plastics and C&D debris. Designed as an interactive event with multiple speakers and panel engaging with attendees over Tuesday and Wednesday, NERC’s spring conference had active discussions on issues important to the industry.
After NERC’s Executive Director, Lynn Rubinstein, gave welcoming remarks, Wednesday started the day with a talk on making diversity, equity and inclusion part of your operations. Megan Pryor, Environmental Specialist for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and NERC’s Vice President, asked a series of questions to the panel that included Olga Zamora, Vice President of Human Resources for ISRI and Melissa Young, DEI Committee Member of NYSAR3 and Assistant Director of the Syracuse University Center for Sustainable Community Solutions.
Olga Zamora explained how ISRI incorporates DE&I by having established a diversity committee, incorporating the definition into core values for recruiting and retention purposes, as well as setting ground rules at meetings. She stressed that all ideas are relevant ideas, respected and heard, all officers have an open door policy, staff are welcome to come in at any time and ask for advice. ISRI asks the staff to be involved as much as possible. “The committee initially focused on race questions because what happened to George Floyd had a huge impact on our staff, but we have broadened it to ethnic and political recommendations. On the recruiting side we’ve been trying to put out as wide a net as possible. It is part of our policies and procedures. We look to see if the position available is one where we can train someone from the ground up and then put them in leadership positions. We try to find different candidates and different strengths; it doesn’t always happen, but we are making every effort to make ISRI as diverse as possible.” Recently, the organization did a survey with staff and people are very open to DE&I. They want to be sure they have diverse people to work with. Zamora is anticipating that they will get back to more formal meetings this year since COVID has decreased. However, DE&I is ongoing, and programs like these encourage different points of view and backgrounds. “We want people to feel like they are in a safe place for voicing opinions and sharing experiences. It is a learning experience. What I’ve found is I don’t know as much as I think I know. It is a learning process, ask questions, you can’t make assumptions. By doing this, it makes you a much more efficient business,” she said.
Melissa Young is a member of the New York Association for Reduction, Reuse and Recycling (NYSAR). She explained that the organization had numerous conversations about starting a women’s group through NYSAR to respond about what was happening in the world. This resulted in W4R (Women in Reduce, Recycling, Reuse and Recycling)., which meets monthly, and has done a lot of networking, development, mentoring. In June 2020, NYSAR needed to develop DE&I and through various discussions with the membership, board members, W4R etc., a committee was created. A value and solidarity statement was created first, so everything they do goes back to that when planning activities of the group. It helps to have that as the foundation. “Currently, we actively work with stakeholders to create a collaborative and safe environment with diverse backgrounds, and we are seeking collaborators as experts in their field that can help to guide us. We’ve reached out to people in new places and tried to think outside of the box. We work with communities around us, in order to include people in the local areas. The challenge is that we are still learning about DE&I and some of the details and processes we may not be familiar with, so we are beginning to expand our understanding and awareness and practices.” She pointed out that small groups allow people to open up more and create ways to communicate about this topic. Communication is the biggest barrier in understanding and we need to create opportunities to bridge that. “We are trying to make it more accessible, talking about what barriers exist internally, keeping members engaged. We are in the beginning of this, having conversations every opportunity we get, and implementing policies and procedures is our next step. That will move us forward. Making sure people are telling their stories, create opportunities to engage at different levels. If you want to stay relevant, you must implement this to reach more perspectives,” Young said.
Next, the session topic shifted to talking about agricultural plastics challenges and solutions. Anne Macmillan, Pesticide Certification and Training Coordinator for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture moderated the session that included speakers Richard Backer, EHS Manager of Tivoly, Gene Jones, CEO of Southern Waste Information Exchange, and Dan Martens, Vice President North America, Novamont.
Richard Backer reviewed single use agricultural plastics diversion at Northwest Solid Waste District (VT). He said they focused for several years on plastic films, nylon spouts, and PC spouts w/ HDPE. He stressed that the industry must educate the customer and generator on types of plastics being used. When you have a program, you can begin to aggregate the material coming. They held a trial in 2019, asking what kind of spouts customer used and started a collection program to keep them out of the landfill. “We have been successful keeping many thousands of pounds of plastics out of the landfill,” said Backer. A signature program even that they have held is sapline recycling. With their roll-off service/container, they support the Winter Sugar Association to collect and bring in sapline, and producers pay a tipping fee. However, contaminated sapline can be hard to deal with downstream, so they set pricing with customer based on contaminated and non-contaminated material (lower price). They have also partnered with other solid waste districts to receive sapline at their facility. Said Backer, “We must educate the people who want to do something with this type of material. Processors may not want it because it has a carbohydrate residue, so when we grind sapline, we can separate it from the polycarbonate residue. While the National Sword ruling affected a lot of people around the world, there has been more opportunities with plastics facilities, etc.”
Gene Jones talked about agricultural plastics used for mulch and the solutions they were looking for breaking down the material. Mainly used for growing of tomatoes in state of Florida, the plastics are typically pulled out by hand and sent to a pile of discarded agricultural plastics or sent to a landfill. In Florida, they allow burning of film in fields where vegetables are being grown, then sent to landfill or plowed into ground. So, how to collect it? They tried several solutions, but soil was abrasive on traditional equipment, like shredder blades. As a result, they developed a technology to extract the film out of the field, reducing the soil level; this way, the mataerial could go to developing alternative fuels for the cement industry (great BTUvalue), plastics to fuel/chemical conversion, for use in the manufacturing of various tile products and asphalt. Says Jones, “We worked with a Metso shredder and ran a trial with a C&D shredder; we also had trials with screening technology, like a trommel screen. We can get 20 tons an hours with shredder.”
Finally. Dan Martens, Vice President North America for Novamont, spoke about Microplastics and the fact that agricultural plastics make up about 3.5% of global plastics, While it may seem low, the concern is the proximity to the soil and the soil’s relationship to the food and water cycle. While polymer coated fertilizers are the #1 problem, films in general are a higher risk, especially with the thickness of the material and years of use. He pointed out that the pathways to improve or change the impacts included refuse, redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover. Are there opportunities to mitigate risk? Possibly through new technologies and solutions. What can the industry do to deal with this problem now – acknowledge, educate, take an action, and engage in a discussion. He stressed do not wait on others to address the problem.
Finally, the discussion turned to new strategies for reusing old C&D debris materials.Moderator Callie Yow, External Relations Associate, for PaintCare introduced the panelists, including John Culbertson, Principal of MSW Consultants, Tim Mulso, Business Development Manager, Recycling Products Division, for Scott Equipment Company, Paul Rolandini, Contractor Sales Manager, for USA Hauling & Recycling, and Mathieu Germain, Director of Strategic Development, for Sanexen.
John Culbertson said that C&D is a complex waste stream. In a number of states there is reporting that it is C&D material, but there are items that tend to get classified as C&D that may not be. Some bulky waste ends up in C&D facilities. When it comes to LEED reporting, facilities may be getting credits for LEED diversion, but most C&D recycling facilities do not sort individual loads, they recycle the whole thing, so they use facility average recycling rate, etc., so in practice, ensuring LEED may not be as easy as it sounds. How is C&D different from traditional recycling? You can find municipal solid waste characterization studies all over the place, however, C&D is different because recycling and disposal are taking place with two different entities and private contracting. There are regulations that can be passed that create incentives. On the C&D side, it tends to be different because of the collection component. That is why you don’t see a lot of characterization studies.
Tim Mulso spoke about recycled gypsum and how it is geographically sensitive to a point – agriculture will depend on the soil and commercial markets—like a board plant or cement manufacturing facility. We are seeing the trend on the gypsum side where the attention is on ESG; private companies are putting a lot of effort toward sustainability goals, emphasizing those goals and diverting material from landfills. CDRA just formed a gypsum recycling committee to see how they can make it more recyclable across the U.S. On the public side, there are states and municipalities that ban the material. He has also seen drywall manufactures get pulled into EPR discussions to include more recycled gypsum in the boards.
Paul Rolandini said that USA Hauling & Recycling has seen the largest material to process are gypsum, wood, metal, and cardboard. They are always looking for new outlets, with transportation being a key factor in cost for customers. How significant are the transportation logistics and constraints? “The Gypsum, for instance, is stored and we transport it to Pennsylvania, so if there was something within a 100 mile radius it would be a lot easier to absorb those costs than something 400 miles away, but those options are not there right now. As a company, we try to build a partnership with our customers and we are perceived as a trusted advisor; however, one size does not fit all, so if a customer needs help with putting together a waste management plan, the goals are on them to achieve but we provide the containers, process material and report the material. Fortunately, we are a locally owned company and have a chance to process it.” He points out that not everything is LEED or tied to a LEED certification project. “If you are going for a LEED certification, the landfill component is a part of that. So if you divert 50% of the total C&D material, generating three material streams, you get one point, 75% of waste material including four streams is two points. We can help customers get those points. We have 38 customer waste management reports we work on in a monthly basis,” said Rolandini.
Mathieu Germain pointed out that facilities are well integrated within their region, and don’t really have transportation. “Anything that is metals is doing well right now. Anything that is outside of the state is what is a little more tricky, depending on the materials you are talking about. Most of the time markets for materials will be outside of the state and some of the options are slowly closing because of environmental issues (also restricting some of the options). Having less options are becoming more of an issue and making sure they can process them completely and meeting with the buyers that are applicable.
Overall the spring conference was a great success, with great discussion, a lot of questions from the attendees, networking and things to share and think about. NERC’s fall conference will take place from November 2 – 3 in Hartford. We hope to see you there!
For more information, visit www.nerc.org.
Read: Northeast Recycling Council Holds First Day of their Spring Conference