Reclaiming Value in the U.S. Recycling System: How Do We Turn Things Around?

The greatest potential to impact the recycling system may lie in small adjustments to make recycling used beverage cans (UBCs) more simplistic and accessible.
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By Dr. John M. Rost, Senior Vice President – Corporate Technology, Sustainability & Regulatory Affairs at Crown

Ask the average consumer about recycling, and they may tell you that it is a poor use of their time and makes no difference — that the system is faulty, and all materials are heaped together for landfill, no matter the steps taken to sort and salvage items along the way. Unfortunately, this misconception has bred a lack of consumer confidence, interest and investment in our local recycling systems — only helping to perpetuate a challenging cycle. So, how do we turn things around?

While in some cases an overhaul of the entire recycling system may seem necessary to restore consumer faith, rebuilding existing infrastructure is often daunting and costly. What regulatory bodies should also consider is that for many areas, the greatest potential for impact may lie in the small adjustments they can make locally. Policymakers and city planners must work to understand where some of the largest opportunities are within existing frameworks.

Waste Worth Its Weight

One of the best starting points for finding those opportunities is with reestablishing how we regard and handle different types of waste. Not all used packaging waste that enters the recycling stream holds the same inherent value or the same circularity potential. Municipalities must work to understand where the juice is worth the squeeze with various materials — namely, identifying where there are high-value items that would not require tremendous effort to save but would make a big difference in economic and environmental benefits if recaptured.

Historically, metal packaging (aluminum and steel cans) has represented the highest-value substrate in the recycling stream. Recovered metal is typically priced high enough that it actually funds the entire system. Additionally, because metal is infinitely recyclable without any loss of properties over time, there is no question about whether the material is worth protecting from landfills. Almost no other substrate is capable of being reused or transformed time and time again without reflecting degradation or requiring significant costs to recover and repurpose.

Benefits with Beverage Cans

While all metal packaging falls into the high-value category, the beverage can specifically serves as an easy opportunity to improve recycling system outcomes. The beverage can is a simplistic item to recycle; the entire package goes into the recycling bin and there are no decisions for consumers to make about whether to remove caps, labels or other components. What’s more, when recovered, the beverage can is able to appear back on shelves within 60 days in many areas of the world and provides economic and environmental benefits. These capabilities are even more important when considering that beverage cans are used at astounding rate — well over 100 billion in the U.S. each year alone. It is a major missed opportunity to not recapture every single can consumed by consumers.

Though there are numerous ways to yield more recycling system value through the beverage can, a couple of core infrastructure concepts present relatively immediate opportunities:

RecycleOS, a new material sorting robot developed by EverestLabs, assists waste diversion, recycling and portable services provider LRS at its Chicagoland material recovery facility (MRF), The Exchange. Funded by Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) members Crown Holdings and Ardagh Metal Packaging as the latest investment in a larger series of support for regional MRFs, RecycleOS will help to improve the efficiency, recovery and recycling of approximately 12 million aluminum beverage cans each month. Image courtesy of EverestLabs and CMI

1. More accessible, more simplistic municipal recycling systems:

Unfortunately, a few issues continue to occur in local recycling systems: Either consumers do not have access to curbside recycling or do not feel responsible for doing their part, or they do sort their waste but then material recovery facilities (MRFs) are unable to shepherd those products through the complete stream and cannot ensure they remain out of landfill.

Even in areas with robust infrastructure, consumers are often misinformed about which items are actually recyclable or again think it is pointless to sort their waste — placing high-value items like beverage cans in the wrong bins. In the regions that lack strong systems, this disconnect may be even more apparent and may make it seem as though any attempt to recapture material is futile without an established system.

Yet, it is important for policymakers to understand that even in areas with weak systems or no systems (and certainly in areas where systems are solid), there is merit to paying close attention to beverage cans. In almost all areas, used beverage cans (UBCs) will be found and used to some degree because they are truly that valuable. They are likely to be sorted, crushed, bailed and shipped off for the reproduction of new essential goods. If we could simplify the process for consumers, asking them to just add one small step to their routine to sort beverage cans, we could recapture the most prized substrate in the system and enable consumers to slowly ease into better overall compliance.

So, how do we single beverage cans out and make it realistic for cities and their residents to keep them out of landfill? Knowing that a multi-substrate recycling bin can sometimes undermine efforts if a MRF has difficulty sorting effectively, one very viable avenue for recapturing beverage cans could be to add a UBC-only can to residences or to neighborhoods and to capture those UBCs in the normal garbage route. Existing trucks could be outfitted with an after-market attachment that collects and/or crushes cans alongside the vehicle body and prepares them to be shipped and sold for profit. Doing this would negate the need (at least initially) for recycling trucks in areas that do not have an existing fleet and would kickstart some level of responsible activity with a low-cost commitment.

This type of retrofit is just one example of how in areas where there may not be effective MRF support to separate substrates or where funding is not available for a complete system build, there may still be some options to enable greater recycling. Finding these solutions simply requires creativity and strategic thinking from policymakers, as well as a mindset that recovering at least a portion of high-value, easy-to-recycle items is far better than taking no action at all.

2. Smarter technology at local sortation facilities:

In addition to making beverage can recycling easier for consumers to adhere to and easier for cities to manage, helping to outfit MRFs with more effective can capture equipment could make a major difference in regional recycling outcomes. MRFs, while built for the sole purpose of picking out and organizing valuable substrates for recycling or reuse, are still prone to missing some materials. In fact, research shows that up to 25% of all UBCs entering MRFs may be missorted and lost due to non-recovery. Luckily, technology continues to evolve and new capabilities like robotics are emerging as options for MRFs to adopt in their processes.

To help supply these facilities with the right tools, organizations like the Can Manufacturers Institute are working with industry players to fund new equipment. After numerous investments around the U.S., the association has reported significant improvement in sortation results. To date, six can capture equipment grants have catalyzed the installation of equipment that will retrieve 115.5 million aluminum beverage cans annually. This recovered material itself is worth $1.8 million and yields an energy savings equivalent to powering more than 5,000 U.S. homes for an entire year. Most recently, a robot added to a new Chicago recycling facility is expected to help properly sort approximately 12 million aluminum beverage cans per month, continuing important momentum in major markets.

This work continues with the goal of not only ensuring UBCs can be planted back into the beverage can manufacturing cycle and reduce the need for virgin material, but also to curtail unnecessary waste and lower carbon emissions associated with the food and beverage industry as a whole.

Effort Across the Supply Chain

These examples demonstrate that minor adjustments to infrastructure centered around beverage can value have the potential to yield major benefits. Still, proving the importance of recycling and securing support for those investments requires greater responsibility across the value chain. While we need municipalities to be resourceful and for MRFs to make upgrades, we need all value chain members to do their part to really combat challenges.

Consumer education, brand adoption of more circular packaging options and support from manufacturers for all upstream and downstream stages can all create more awareness industry-wide about the importance of high-value material recovery. These efforts can also help to rebuild the consumer confidence and commitment that are so essential for a strong recycling stream—ultimately laying the foundation for a more effective system long-term.

About the Author

John Rost joined Crown in 1997, progressing from Manager of Regulatory Affairs to Senior Vice President – Corporate Technology, Sustainability & Regulatory Affairs. During his tenure at the company, John established a global team ensuring Crown’s response to regulatory issues around the world met the highest standards and he was also instrumental in forming and leading the current Sustainability team that launched Crown’s Twentyby30 program in 2020. John serves on the Board of Governors for the Can Manufactures Institute and Metal Packaging Europe’s Beverage Board. Learn more at https://www.crowncork.com.

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