Virtual WASTECON’s second day opened with a session on “Improving Solid Waste Management in Latin America”. Presented entirely in Spanish with David Biderman, Executive Director and CEO of SWANA, acting as the moderator, the discussion featured speakers, Gabriel Barraez, Caterpillar Global Construction and Infrastructure, América del Sur, Magda Correal from the Banco Interamericano De Desarrollo, Carlos Filho Silva from the Associação Brasileira de Empresas de Limpeza Pública e Resíduos Especiais (ABRELPE), and Diego Polania of CRA. Following this great session, Caterpillar introduced their Cat 816 Landfill Compactor, which just launched and is available for demo.
THe first keynote session of the day looked at “The Role of Waste Management in the Sustainable Recovery in Our Cities” and was presented by Elizabeth Montoya of Rubicon. She talked about the “better new normal” and the role of waste management in the sustainable recovery of our cities while looking to a sustainable future. Quality of life is a key differentiator. Because waste management impacts quality of life, it should be a big part of the bigger picture. Think about the shifts—what is the role of managers going forward. The first part is to ensure service continuity (adaptability and remote work). She covered an example of Fort Smith, AR that went live with a cloud-based solution, paperless and fully digital. In addition, Spokane, WA’s success resulted operational efficiency, including in reducing printing costs, tracking extra set out and digitizing government services. The second part is waste management. This includes uncovering costs savings, leveraging existing assets, actionable insights, community engagement, and urban data collection. Finally, it is important to champion ESG – environmental, social and governance. Montoya gave an example of landfill diversion in Atlanta, GA, where they reduced amount of recyclables going to landfill by 83 percent by using RubiconSmartCity data collection and San Antonio, TX tackled contamination by partnering with Rubicon to create a contamination detection tool.
She wrapped up the talk by stressing the importance of sourcing services and materials locally, reducing the distances and complexities of supply chains, investing in robust infrastructure, and looking at pilot smart city enhancements. After the main presentation, Conor Riffle joined Montoya in fielding questions from the audience about various issues relating to smart cities, including infrastructure and optimizing routes.
Next, a returning favorite, Rebecca Ryan from Next Generation Consulting, conducted an interactive and lively session on future-focused leadership. She made a point to thank attendees and frontline workers for their sacrifice, tirelessness and steadfastness through these challenging times. Next, she wanted to get a reading on the audience by asking how they felt on a scale of 1 – 10. Her goal was to keep the session interactive through using chat feature available. She wanted the audience to “walk out of the session” with more perspective and control. She asked, how do we maintain perspective in the middle of a triple pandemic—a health crisis, race crisis, and economic crisis. We need to recognize that we will never face a moment like this again and we have the strength to continue on. She discussed recovery strategies through a future-focused lens and revisited the top issues that solid waste leaders needed to work to get out in front of to effect change, including infrastructure overhaul, engaged citizens, fiscal uncertainty and collaboration. She focused on two main questions: how has the pandemic effected these areas and how can we continue to make progress? Keeping the session interactive, she went over several exercises on perception. She stressed that some mindsets tend to be quick to form and slow to change. When faced with a major paradigm shift, those who know the most about the domain have the most unlearn to adapt. You have to be willing to see the bigger picture with help from other people.
The final keynote of the day focused on “How to Successfully Achieve EPA’s New 50% Recycling Goal”. Moderated by Tim Flanagan, this discussion included speakers Bridget Anderson from the New York City Department of Sanitation, Scott Mouw from The Recycling Partnership, Brent Bell from Waste Management Recycle America and Zoe Heller at CalRecycle. Presented as a roundtable discussion, speakers discussed the impact of the new strategies and goals that have been set. The panel also discussed how these goals can be achieved through a reduction in contamination, increased processing efficiency and strengthening domestic markets.
Heller stressed that there needs to be consistency in methodologies, making sure that 50 percent means the same thing for everyone. While 50 percent recycling goal is important, we want to ensure that this material is being made into new products. What actually happens to the material? How do we get to the next step? She is also seeing significant shifts in recycling streams from commercial to residential, which includes more contamination because of behavior at the household level. As we start addressing this, we are looking at potentially less material that we count as diverted. We need to look upstream that is in line with our systems in order to process that material. In thinking about product design, how can we align better with the infrastructure and education and outreach, so consumers are not confused. She pointed out that we need to continue to learn from each other and have conversations like this because it gives us a chance to continue the dialogue on what is working in sector and industry.
Bell stressed that there are so many valuable materials that are being put into the landfill and we need to study what can be diverted and recycled. There is a demand for material—50 million new tons in the marketplace—so how can we make sure we can divert it. HDPE has passed aluminum in price per tons, but it is driven by manufactured recycled content that they want right now to make new products. Bell also discussed that states started pushing single-stream collection about 10 to 15 years ago and they saw nice increase, but contamination issues came along with that and a lack of education. Many communities don’t have full access to pickup and in the last few years, we’ve seen some communities pull back their programs. We need to give them the tools to get their participation rates up. For the recycling infrastructure, they have been committed to long-term partners. While we need to show them a plan to invest more in recycling in the next decade, we also need to make sure that investments in end markets continue to grow, and that manufacturers are being supported since they are critical for sustainable long-term outlets.
Anderson talked about needing an alignment of knowledge and understanding about what is happening. In New York City, the highest capture rate is cardboard. It is easy to identify, pickup and there is value. Their aluminum can collection is less than 50%; she said it will be interesting to understand the patterns that we are seeing across the industry and pointed out that there could be a broader effort that could be managed but we would need to coordinate efforts. She said we need to think about where the volume is, need to find it where we can, and go where it is accessible. How do we help be a part of driving demand and make sure that packaging has recycled content? We need to drive manufacturers to seek recycled products to use in their packaging.
Finally, Mouw stressed that measuring will only get the industry so far. We will also need to have strategies (especially with regards to food, electronics, recyclables, etc.) in order to understand what that goal means. He said that the 50 percent goal won’t apply to all materials, pushing some of these materials towards a higher place of recovery over a period of time like food waste, which has a huge role to play. Financing and infrastructures will be needed to get food waste to where EPT and cardboard is. These issues have to addressed. We need to look at transitional materials that will be the ones that will lead us toward the 50 percent goal. Infrastructure that is in place can lead the way. As we focus on access to recycling as a key issue, keep in mind that 15 million multifamily residential places do not have access to recycling, so that will need to be worked on. There are also still big gaps in curbside recycling, especially for those that have subscriptions; some large cities don’t have access to recycling or low performing bin programs. Participation and capture behavior are challenges as well. Curbside may have been around a long time but there is still work to do. Finally, he stressed the environmental need for packaging to be recyclable. There are policy models where brands pay for that essential capital. State and local governments have spent a lot of time and money to get to where we are today, and it is going to take more investment. We need markets with the capacity to build a system where it is just as easy to recycle as throwing something away.
It was an interesting and informative discussion and a great wrap up to day two of the conference. Today, discussions will cover “Media Relations for Solid Waste Professionals”, “Paying for Waste During the Downturn”, and “Big Cities Talking Trash”. Be sure to tune in!
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