New Frontiers in Waste Management

Reuse is the second step of the waste hierarchy and requires a combination of design for recycling (DfR), clean materials and effective supply chains. Rubbermaid and Moore Business Forms have made strides forward by designing products with recycled content while providing reliable supply chains.

Mechanical recycling works best with high-grade, sorted waste. Unfortunately, however, mechanical recycling faces several structural challenges that hinder its effectiveness. Sustaining green premiums, scaling technologies and cross-value chain partnerships could encourage investment in advanced recycling technology.

1. Enhanced Sorting

Recycling content can save businesses money while protecting the environment. That has certainly been proven true in paper products such as American Airlines’ computer division’s switch to 100% recycled content paper products; their shift has saved over $100,000 and decreased printing costs significantly, as well as cutting production costs by 30% or more using polypropylene (PP).

Advanced sorting can provide savings through producing high-quality mono-waste fractions; and this technology can be applied to address many other waste management needs beyond paper and plastics.

Some of the most exciting innovations in this field focus on smart solutions that enable precision tracking, supply chain optimization, and product lifecycle planning–three pillars of circular economies. IP rights play a vital role in protecting these innovations and spreading them out across industries.

Advanced technologies are capable of helping address some of the toughest challenges to sustainable development, including an exponentially-increasing amount of electronic waste (e-waste). Comprised of complex materials requiring special disposal methods for environmental safety, by 2050 an estimated 78 million tons will have been created by consumers alone.

Traditional recycling practices cannot meet this challenge effectively, and companies must reimagine their supply chains and find innovative solutions. One example is Germany’s Duales System Deutschland, formed through a collaboration of retailers and over 600 product manufacturers; it provides an ideal model for U.S. firms looking to incorporate green initiatives into their corporate strategies without bearing all of the associated financial costs of developing manufacturing and recycling systems from scratch.

Other innovations can speed up processing of recycled materials to make them more useful, like Digimarc’s watermark technology which has proven its ability to increase sortation accuracy, efficiency and precision at various waste and recycling facilities by helping machines identify dark-colored packaging such as multilayer boxes. This feature is particularly effective at sorting e-waste from food packaging as a separate entity.

2. Enhanced Recycling

Enhance recycling is an advanced form of mechanical recycling that contributes towards building a circular economy model. Combining mechanical and chemical recycling methods into one process that breaks down materials into their raw commodities for reuse through thermal decomposition, chemical dissolution or mechanical separation methods; examples include pyrolysis and thermo-mechanical plastics processing (TMP).

Enhancing recycling seeks to make recycling complex and mixed materials simpler and reduce waste and inefficiencies in the system, particularly for multi-material high value items like electronics or food packaging. Such innovation ensures more waste stays out of landfills and oceans and lower costs for companies and consumers alike.

Advanced recycling technologies enable advanced recycling companies to process plastics that were once considered trash into products that can be recycled again and again, creating new business models with positive environmental benefits. Recycling technologies continue to advance, making enhanced recycling one of the latest technological breakthroughs bringing positive changes for both people and the planet.

Many organizations across the polyester value chain are joining forces to modernize our recycling system and improve it for future generations. Their collaboration aims at creating robust domestic markets for recycling new materials and products; improving communication between their manufacturers and end-of-life management organizations; and encouraging development of innovative technologies to aid these efforts.

These innovations can make an enormous impact in our ability to meet the goals of America Recycles Day and fulfill U.S. commitments under Basel Convention. In addition, they may reduce energy costs for recycling programs while simultaneously helping consumers reduce wasteful disposal practices that cost consumers money and send more trash directly into landfills or incinerators.

Coca-Cola recently unveiled a cross-industry consortium to make increased recycling of opaque and difficult-to-recycle PET plastic a commercial reality, using depolymerization. This process breaks down PET into its basic building blocks for easier purification, which ultimately can lead to higher-grade recycled material that can be repurposed again in new applications.

3. Enhanced Reuse

Paper and plastic industries, as industrial buyers of recycled material, are well positioned to use supply and demand factors to keep prices steady for their products. But, their efforts may be hindered by market forces that make balancing supply and demand difficult.

At times, this has forced companies to compete against one another for recycled raw materials. Recently, HDPE markets have become so flooded with recycled material that their price has seen dramatic drops – impacting profitability for recyclers and paper producers who must offer recycled product at lower rates in order to retain market share.

Companies are taking steps to address this problem by employing various strategies for market expansion of recycled products. Some involve harnessing technology as part of an overall industry growth plan; others target specific consumer concerns about quality and availability issues with recycled goods.

Businesses can increase demand for recycled products by creating an eco-friendly image and informing consumers about the advantages of purchasing recycled items as well as using green packaging and advertising techniques.

Other strategies combine government and business interests to spur changes necessary for reaching full-scale recycling goals. For example, Bell Atlantic has invested in creating effective phone book recycling partnerships with local public-sector recycling coordinators so its directories themselves can be recycled rather than landfilled – this includes eliminating hot-melt binding glues that might clog paper-pulp recycling equipment, as well as doing away with glossy paper covers that might prevent recycling equipment from working efficiently.

Other strategies involve incorporating new technology into product designs to make them more easily recyclable, known as “design for reuse.” This involves reducing the number of parts and materials used, disassembling them for recycling more easily or replacing components when worn out or obsolete – an approach proven successful for electronics like computers and televisions but less successful with other types of goods.

4. Enhanced Sustainability

Recycling industries rely heavily on technology, but new solutions are making their work even more efficient and saving businesses money at the same time. Not only are these solutions cutting waste levels down significantly but they’re also saving businesses money through cost savings.

Smart sorting systems use artificial intelligence to quickly and accurately recognize various recyclable materials, eliminating human error while increasing efficiency and speeding up recycling centers’ operations. Furthermore, this allows more material to be processed more rapidly at faster rates than before.

By using recycled materials to produce new products, using them helps preserve natural resources by eliminating the need to mine or extract fresh raw materials. Reusing paper and plastic reduces consumption of virgin wood pulp or oil-based plastic resins and conserves water, minerals, fossil fuels as well as prevent pollution associated with mining activities and transportation activities.

Long term, this can have a tremendously positive impact on local economies. Reusing scraps and old items creates local jobs by collecting, sorting and recycling them while giving businesses an advantage in reaching environmentally conscious customers.

Demand for recycled goods is on the rise, thanks to government and environmental groups’ advocacy of “buy recycled” campaigns which encourage businesses, organizations, and institutions to purchase items with recycled content. But increasing this demand comes with challenges of its own.

Recycled commodities can often be hard to sell at fair prices due to a shortage of buyers willing to offer fair pricing, since the recycled commodity’s cost doesn’t always compare favorably with virgin raw material costs. Overcapacity has presented HDPE market participants with this difficulty as overcapacity drives recycled prices below what industrial users can pay.

Companies can meet these challenges head on by adopting transformational circular solutions into their operational waste and recycling management processes. Such solutions break the link between economic activity and resource depletion by reducing waste, reusing materials efficiently, managing resources efficiently and responsibly – benefits which could include lower costs and higher profitability for their business.