The company says it will continue to pursue all avenues to challenge the decision.

The city of Chicago has denied Southside Recycling its final permit—the large recycling facility (LRF) permit—thereby preventing the company from operating. In response, the company says it will challenge the decision using all available channels.

The LRF applies to just a few businesses that meet certain thresholds for the volume of material handled, and the rules governing it were released in June of 2020. Southside Recycling was the first company to apply for an LRF permit under these new rules.

Southside Recycling submitted its permit application in November 2020. Shortly before doing so, the company says, it had received promises from city officials that its permit would be issued by year-end. Following a public hearing on the application and a request for additional information from the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), the company submitted a revised application in mid-January 2021. The city assured the company that its application was complete and sufficient, Hal Tolin, RMG chief operating officer, previously told Recycling Today.

The decision to deny the LRF permit was reached following an analysis that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended to assess the environmental justice implications and potential environmental and health effects of the proposed facility. The CDPH conducted the analysis.

In May 2021, EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan sent a letter to Mayor Lightfoot suggesting that the city complete an environmental justice analysis, such as a health impact assessment (HIA), prior to making a decision on the permit for the Southside Recycling facility. The city of Chicago then announced that the permit review for the site would be suspended until the city could complete a HIA. 

Since then, the EPA says it has provided Chicago with technical assistance and support, including an air quality analysis and advice on conducting a HIA.

“The potential addition of another polluter in this overburdened and underserved community raised significant environmental justice and civil rights concerns,” Regan says. “I applaud Mayor Lightfoot for listening to those concerns and acting to protect the health of the residents. This is what environmental justice looks like: All levels of government working together to protect vulnerable communities from pollution in their backyards. As we did in Chicago, EPA stands ready to work hand in hand with local and state partners to fix environmental wrongs and achieve shared goals of protecting all people from pollution.”

The parent company of Southside Recycling, Reserve Management Group (RMG), headquartered in Stow, Ohio, says the site is designed to be the most advanced automobile shredding facility in the country. It features a European-style shredder enclosure to better contain noise and emissions. The shredder incorporates a regenerative thermal oxidizer and wet scrubber to address the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It also features a suction hood and high-efficiency filters to capture metals and particulate matter. The Southside Recycling operation even features an on-site wastewater treatment plant.

In response to the decision, RMG issued a statement:

“We have built the most environmentally conscious metal recycling facility in the country, but politicians and government officials have ignored the facts and instead were cowed by persistent false narratives and misinformation aimed at demonizing our business. What should have been an apolitical permitting process was hijacked by a small but vocal opposition that long ago made clear they would unconditionally oppose this facility, facts and science be damned. Politics, not environmental or public health protection, is the only reason that the city denied Southside Recycling’s permit to operate.

“Experts repeatedly determined that Southside Recycling would not threaten public health or environmental justice efforts. When the Illinois EPA completed its exhaustive review process and issued our state air permit in June 2020, its efforts were lauded by career professionals at the U.S. EPA for taking a rigorous approach to community engagement and environmental justice considerations. And the city’s own health experts, using intentionally inflated parameters to overstate the effects of the operation, still concluded that the facility poses no risk of adverse health effects above the benchmarks defined by the U.S. EPA.

“We will continue to pursue all avenues to challenge this decision, including pressing our lawsuit against the city, which will likely result in taxpayers being on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Aside from the litigation, this decision is a clear message to any businesses or industries that might be considering expansion or investment in Chicago: the city is not a reliable partner and is not open for business. Chicago has loudly stated that politics—not signed agreements, its own laws and regulations, nor actual protection of human health and the environment—is the ultimate consideration in all matters.” 

The companies say the lid can replace single-use plastic and significantly lessens CO2 emissions during production. 

Scandicore, a manufacturer of paper cores and a supplier of tubes for the consumer market that is based in Boras, Sweden, has partnered with Pulpac, a packaging manufacturer in Goteborg, Sweden, has launched what they say is the world’s first paper tube lid.  

According to a joint news release, the lids are made with PulPac’s dry molded fiber technology. Bridge volumes will be manufactured by PulPac, and the first art print deliveries with the new lid are estimated to reach consumers this spring.   

“Safeguarding the environment and the quality of our products, are our primary competitive advantages,” says Eva Engström, CEO at Scandicore. “The physical strength of the dry molded fiber products, in combination with resource efficiency, where valuable water resources and energy are saved, in addition to significant reductions of CO2, makes this a strategic investment for Scandicore."  

Dry molded fiber is PulPac's fiber-forming technology. The company says it can replace single-use plastic with sustainable fiber-based alternatives at a low cost. The patented technology is available to converters that set up their own production. To accelerate the shift, PulPac has developed the PulPac Modula standardized machine platform, now starting to roll out to licensees and available at the PulPac Tech Center for sample and bridge volume production.  

“We offer a ‘wheat to bread’ setup, delivering application development, toolmaking, and sample production to ease the transition to Dry Molded Fiber,” says Sanna Fager, chief commercial officer at PulPac. “In close collaboration with our clients, we develop competitive, and sustainable market-ready applications. The paper tube lid is a perfect fit for our technology, and we are happy to partner with Scandicore to bring this unique solution to the market.” 

The feedstock will be made using Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology at the recently announced Honeywell and Sacyr advanced recycling plant to be built in Andalucía, Spain.

Honeywell, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, says it has agreed to supply TotalEnergies with recycled polymer feedstock (RPF) made using Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology, a form of chemical recycling, at the recently announced Honeywell and Sacyr advanced recycling plant to be built in Andalucía, Spain. TotalEnergies, headquartered in Paris, will purchase and convert this raw material into virgin-quality polymers, which could be used for food-grade packaging and other high demanding applications.

The UpCycle plant, which will be owned by a joint venture between Honeywell and Sacyr, will process and convert 30,000 tons of mixed plastics annually into RFP using Honeywell's technology, which is  based on pyrolysis, which uses heat in the absence of oxygen to break down polymers. Startup of the UpCycle plant is expected in 2023, with RPF to be used for the manufacturing of high-quality polymers in TotalEnergies’ European-based production units. With identical properties to virgin polymers, the recycled polymers are expected to be suitable for a wide range of applications including food-grade applications, such as flexible and rigid food packaging containers, Honeywell says.

This first planned project represents the start of the collaboration between Honeywell and TotalEnergies in the field of advanced recycling. Both parties say they are committed to addressing the issue of plastic waste and helping to build a more circular and sustainable economy in Europe, and the rest of the world.

“Plastics demand will continue to grow, so it’s critical to create a linkage between waste management and plastics production to strengthen a circular flow of plastics,” says Ben Owens, vice president and general manager, Honeywell Sustainable Technology Solutions. “The relationship with TotalEnergies will provide a strong recycled polymer feedstock offtake partner and coupled with our recently announced advanced recycling plant with Sacyr, Honeywell is leading the drive toward a more circular plastics economy.”

"We are pleased to partner with Honeywell to tackle the issue of plastic waste through the development of advanced plastic recycling and thereby the circular economy, one of the pillars of sustainable development. This project, with a 2023 targeted startup, will contribute to meet our ambition of producing 30 percent recycled and renewable polymers by 2030,” says V alérie Goff, senior vice president, Polymers, at TotalEnergies .

One reclaimer says unless fiber producers are willing to pay more for material, it will go to the bottle market.

While prices for mixed-color and natural high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) bales have contracted, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle bales have maintained their value, Bill Keegan of Dem-Con Cos. says. Dem-Con operates a material recovery facility (MRF) in Shakopee, Minnesota, that serves the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as well as greater Minnesota.

Since October of last year, Keegan says, HDPE bales, particularly mixed color, have decreased considerably in price after gaining substantially from January through July of 2021. As of February, he says natural HDPE bale prices have decreased 45 percent from their highest price last year, while mixed-color HDPE bale prices have fallen 60 percent. PP bales prices as of February were 40 percent lower than their high last year.

Keegan says HDPE and PP scrap is “coming back to more historic prices,” adding that their values are still roughly 30 percent greater than they were in 2019.

Bale prices for these polyolefin scrap grades are responding to lower virgin plastic prices. “Underlying demand for recycled content is buffering that,” Keegan says as brand owners recognize that recycled content is a necessity, even if it’s not mandated by law.

The pressure is especially strong when it comes to PET packaging, which is diverting material away from fiber production. According to the “2020 PET Recycling Report” that the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), Charlotte, North Carolina, released in late 2021, the amount of recycled PET (rPET) used by end markets in the U.S. and Canada increased by 10 percent in 2020, signaling strong support of postconsumer content in brand packaging. RPET use by the food/beverage and non-food/beverage bottle categories grew by 32 percent, surpassing fiber for the first time as the primary user of postconsumer PET bottles.

A scrap buyer for a company that primarily serves the fiber market says bottle-to-bottle recycling is the “holy grail” in rPET. Unless fiber producers are willing to pay more for material, it will go to the bottle market, where the mandates are at play and the consumer pressure is more acutely felt, he says.

Bottle-to-bottle demand also is increasing the barrier to entry for reclaimers, which have to invest in more sophisticated technology and processes to produce food-grade rPET, the buyer says. “That is the backside to the forward progress,” he adds.

One PET recycler that is investing in additional bottle-to-bottle recycling capacity is Evergreen, based in Clyde, Ohio. The company began recycling to have recycled content for the strapping its parent company produced. Now, roughly 95 percent of its rPET pellet production is sold for use in food-grade packaging, Evergreen General Manager Greg Johnson says.

Evergreen completed the acquisition of UltrePET and Novapet from wTe Corp., Bedford, Massachusetts, in November 2021. The move helped to increase its annual rPET capacity to more than 147 million pounds from 40 million pounds just one year ago. Additionally, Evergreen is adding a 54,000-square-foot building that will house four high-volume, food-grade rPET manufacturing lines at its Clyde site, taking its overall rPET pellet production to 217 million pounds.

“We’ve gone to the market and said, ‘Here’s our capacity. Once we sell it, we’re done,’” Omar Abuaita, president and CEO of Evergreen’s parent company, Greenbridge, says. “So, we are signing up multiyear contracts with a lot of the major CPGs (consumer packaged goods), and, once we’re committing to them, we’re done with everybody else.”

Abuaita says two major factors were behind the company’s purchase of UltrePET and Novapet. “We’re constantly looking for opportunities to expand our reach to our existing customer base as well as new ones,” he says. “And another big play with the Nova acquisition was the security of supply. That was a pretty big factor in our decision-making.”

Purchasing Novapet allows Evergreen to tap into the supply of PET bottles generated in Nova Scotia and the other Atlantic provinces of Canada.

The resource provides the most current plastic packaging recyclability guidelines for countries and regions around the world, the association says.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), Washington, has launched the APR Global Design Catalog. The association says the resource provides comprehensive access to the most current plastic packaging recyclability guidelines for countries and regions around the world.

Different countries and regions operate a variety of recycling collection and processing systems, the APR notes. Many of them oversee complex extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs that hold manufacturers and suppliers accountable for the end-of-life fate of packaging materials. EPR programs in virtually all jurisdictions reference some design for recyclability index to encourage companies to design more sustainable packaging.

“The APR Design Guide for Plastics Recyclability remains the leading package design resource for countries across the globe,” says Steve Alexander, APR president and CEO. “Due to the differences in operational recycling systems and EPR requirements among countries, harmonizing design for recyclability across the globe is a challenging endeavor. APR’s Global Design Catalog gives you all the design requirements at your fingertips to assist in comparing and contrasting best design practices in different countries.”

The new catalog includes guidance from Denmark, the EU, France, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and the U.K. It covers recyclability evaluations for rigid polyethylene terephthalate (PET), rigid high-density polyethylene (HDPE), rigid polypropylene (PP) and flexible polyethylene film packaging. Additional countries and features will be added in the coming months, the APR says. 

“Design for recyclability is key to creating a circular economy for plastics packaging,” Alexander says. “APR’s Global Design Catalog, as a complement to the APR Design Guide, provides the detailed design guidance required for brand owners to achieve their sustainability commitments within the demands of the global marketplace.”

APR members can access the catalog for free with a subscription. See https://plasticsrecycling.org/apr-global-guidance for more information.