A recycling company hopes to help Kent County, MI achieve its ambitious goal of diverting 90 percent of the county’s trash from landfills by 2030 by working directly with restaurants and grocers to reduce food and beverage waste. Perfect Circle Recycling LLC’s primary business will be product destruction and recycling food and beverage products that are still in packaging, said Chief Operating Officer Todd Wilson. The company plans to partner with grocers, restaurants, breweries, schools and universities to help them reduce waste that otherwise would go to a landfill. “Globally, diverting (waste) from landfills is where we need to go,” Wilson said. “Landfills continue to fill and get buried and we want to be on the front edge of being able to recycle what we can. It benefits the health of the community and provides jobs.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food waste is roughly 30-40 percent of the food supply, which in 2010 equated to about 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food. Food waste occurs at every stage of the supply chain from farms, transportation, retailers, and as a result of over-ordering. Perfect Circle Recycling signed a lease on its 20,000-square-foot facility in April, located at 1739 Elizabeth Ave. NW. Machine delivery has been delayed due to COVID-19, but a packaging separator is expected to arrive in October, Wilson said. The company has let Spectrum Health take over its building in the interim until its machine arrives.
Once the company is fully operational, it will provide businesses with 64-gallon carts to collect organic food and beverage waste, which will be collected and processed by Perfect Circle, Wilson said. Any packaging will be consolidated and recycled so it can be put back into circulation. From there, Wilson said the company intends to take liquid waste from the process to an anaerobic digester in Fremont to create renewable energy. The traditional way of doing things is to take food and beverage waste to a landfill or incinerator, which produces noxious fumes, Wilson explained. Perfect Circle Recycling will also have the ability to decant and properly dispose of beer that has spoiled, Wilson said, which some breweries faced during the stay-home order. “There are many progressive restaurants and breweries that want to run their businesses sustainably and what’s perceived as ecofriendly to their community,” Wilson said. “We will help them do that.”