Ethylene producer works with Spain’s Saica Natur to produce flexible packaging resins with 60 percent recycled content.

Switzerland-based Ineos Olefins & Polymers (O&P) Europe says it is expanding its range of Recycl-IN products to include flexible packaging materials with more than 60 percent recycled content.

Ineos O&P says it is partnering with Spain-based Saica Natur in a supply agreement for recycled low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and low-low-density polyethylene (LLDPE). “The long-term agreement will help Ineos to serve the growing demand for increased levels of recycled product in sustainable, virgin-quality flexible packaging,” states Ineos O&P.

“Together with Saica Natur, we have the innovation, drive, know-how and capability to move towards a circular economy for plastics in flexible packaging,” comments Rob Ingram, CEO of Ineos O&P North Europe. “Saica are experts in recycling postconsumer plastic film. Ineos has the polymer science expertise to improve the quality, specification and performance of the finished product. We are very pleased to add these new flexible packaging products to our Recycl-IN range.”

Victor Sanz, director general of Saica Natur, says, “With this agreement, we are moving towards a circular economy model through the use of resources in a more sustainable and efficient way. Waste is transformed into a secondary raw material that will be then incorporated into new high-quality products. This is an example of commitment towards achieving a long-term sustainable growth.”

In a presentation at the 2019 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference Europe, Sanz said a “well-developed supply chain” would be needed, in combination with effective sorting, washing and granulating capacity, to produce high-quality, recycled-content polymers for the many types of plastic used in packaging applications.

Ineos O&P says the polyethylene Recycl-IN resins to be produced will “meet the needs of converters, brand owners and retailers, to use more than 60 percent recycled plastics in very demanding applications such as stretch and lamination films typically used in flexible pouches for detergent and personal care products.”

Recycl-IN materials combine the recycled plastic with what Ineos O&P calls “highly engineered virgin polymers.” The resulting materials have properties equivalent to virgin materials while meeting the demand for an increase in the use of recycled content, adds the firm.

Saica Natur is the recycling and waste management business unit of Saica Group, which also is one of the largest European producers of recycled-content corrugated board. The company also offers flexible packaging through Saica Flex, and its Natur Cycle Plus business unit specializes in the recovery, classification and treatment of LDPE to create recycled-content resins.

Company confirms its transition to 100 percent rPET in two nations; cites deposit-return systems as “key enabler.”

Coca-Cola in Western Europe says it has completed a transition from using virgin resin-based plastic to using plastic bottles made from 100 percent recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) in the Netherlands and Norway.

The beverage maker says the two nations join Sweden, which completed the switch in December 2019, in being able to sell products such as Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta in rPET bottles. A representative of Coca-Cola in Western Europe credits deposit-return systems in these nations as being a critical link to guarantee feedstock to produce rPET.

“A key enabler for Coca-Cola’s switch to 100 percent recycled plastic material in the Netherlands and Norway is the rapidly expanding and effective deposit-return schemes operational in both countries,” states Coca-Cola in Western Europe regarding the completed transition. Such systems, adds the firm, will play a “vital role” in the company’s “100 percent rPET vision.”

Comments Joe Franses, vice president of sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners, “Crucially, this announcement provides a compelling case for the role that deposit-return schemes can play in the creation of local circular economies for beverage packaging. Markets with well-designed [systems] such as those in Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway not only have high collection rates but also have the capacity to collect a higher grade of material with less contamination.”

Continues Franses, “Coca-Cola in Western Europe is a firm supporter of the implementation of well-designed deposit-return schemes across Europe, recognizing the role they can play as part of local, closed-loop recycling system. We also remain committed to supporting innovative packaging and recycling technologies to help us to reach our target of 50 percent recycled content across all our plastic bottles by 2023.”

As part of a joint Sustainability Action Plan called This is Forward, Coca-Cola Co. in Western Europe and its primary bottler Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) have pledged that by 2025, Coca-Cola will: 1) collect a can or bottle for each one it sells; 2) ensure that all its packaging is 100 percent recyclable; and 3) by 2023 will ensure that at least 50 percent of the content of its PET bottles will come from recycled content, moving toward an “ambition to use zero virgin oil-based PET in its PET bottles within a decade.”

At the opening keynote of WasteExpo Together Online, Mittelstaedt offered his perspective on his more than three decades in the industry, the emerging role of technology in waste, the importance of servant leadership, his perceptions on the upcoming presidential election’s potential impact on M&A activity and more.

WasteExpo Together Online kicked off Sept. 14 with a keynote conversation between Waste Connections Inc. Executive Chairman of the Board Ron Mittelstaedt and National Waste & Recycling Association President and CEO Darrell Smith.

The conversation spanned a number of topics, including Mittelstaedt’s perspective on his more than three decades in the industry, the emerging role of technology in waste, the importance of servant leadership, his perceptions on the upcoming presidential election’s potential impact on M&A activity and more.

Recounting his start in the industry with Browning-Ferris Industries roughly 32 years ago, Mittelstaedt says that the waste sector looked much different than it does today.

“Technology has had a huge impact on the business,” he says. “Back in the late '80s, there were so many more public companies—probably 16 or 17 as compared to four or so today. Landfills were more like old dump sites where things were just buried or covered, and today, they’re really engineering marvels where people are spending $500,000-plus an acre to construct very sophisticated airspace and monitoring solutions. And waste collection was mostly manual back then. You had rear loaders for both commercial and residential [accounts] with two or three workers hanging off of [the truck]. Today, we’re running mostly one-man vehicles with automated side loader or front loaders for commercial.”

Mittelstaedt says that these technical advances have spurred a lot of consolidation in the space because the cost of being in business is so much higher than it was 30 years ago. Beyond the cost of managing more sophisticated landfills, which Mittelstaedt says is “20 fold” what it used to be, operators are charged with overseeing fleets that can cost upwards of $400,000 per truck, rather than the $80,000 price tag they had in the late 1980s. Altogether, these cost increases have led to consolidation among public and private companies.

Within his company, Mittelstaedt says that the relationship between management and front-line workers has also changed over the years. Mittelstaedt says this emphasis on the employee is something Waste Connections has championed over the past 15 years through its mantra of embracing servant leadership.

“Servant leadership is something you have to indoctrinate into your DNA, and it becomes a way of life and a way of doing things, so it takes a long time. … At its core, servant leadership is about the leader or manager being responsible to those who work for them rather than the other way around where people are responsible for who they report to,” he explains. “This is about the leader taking personal responsibility for the health, safety and welfare both professionally and personally for those that they have the opportunity to lead. It’s about employees being able to hold leaders accountable.”

Mittelstaedt says that while this approach to leadership isn’t for everyone, it has become a mandatory part of being a Waste Connections employee. The result, he notes, is that workers are more closely aligned and bound to each other. During the COVID crisis, the demands of being a servant leader have been on display throughout the company with employees dealing with disruptions at home relative to significant others and children being away from work and school.

“That’s where servant leadership really stands out because it’s the burden of leaders to try and figure out how [their fellow employees] can manage the work/home life balance and help them be successful both at work and at home,” he says.

Mittelstaedt went on to say that how the company looks at hiring and retention has also changed in his time in business as the industry strives to be more inclusive. Specifically, Mittelstaedt says that Waste Connections has worked to evaluate where “innate biases” may be held throughout the company to ensure that the most qualified candidates get hired and advanced irrespective of their gender, age, religion, race or sexual orientation.

Through the company’s self-evaluation, Waste Connections has reconfigured its board of directors. Currently, 25 percent of the board is composed of women or minority candidates, up from 0 several years ago. The goal is for 30 percent or more of the company’s board to be comprised of female or minority candidates in the near future, with this focus on diversity trickling down to the rest of the company.

Speaking on the industry’s future, Mittelstaedt says that the upcoming presidential election will have a lot to do with M&A activity seen in the sector over the next four years.

“The reality is that we projected four years ago that if President Trump was elected, there would be acceleration of M&A across the board …, and it has literally been a record four years of M&A,” he says. “And that’s due to tax change, interest rates, it’s due to the GDP the economy [showcased] pre-COVID, it’s due to the expensing of capital—there are a host of things that have undergirded the expansion of M&A for the industry and for Waste Connections. The reality is that if President Trump is reelected, and depending on what happens in the House and Senate as well as if current tax regulation and fiscal policy stays, I think you’ll see strong M&A for the next four years.”

Mittelstaedt went on to say that while he thinks there might be an appetite for robust M&A activity in the near term, he doesn’t envision a future where there are public to public M&A deals being orchestrated, especially in light of the Department of Justice scrutiny of the Waste Management/Advanced Disposal acquisition.

As for projections on the future, Mittelstaedt says to expect technology to continue to steer the industry forward, both literally and figurately, and for more uniform regulation to influence how companies operate.

“You’re going to continue to see automation and technology accelerate across the industry,” he says. “You’re going to see the evolution of electric trucks; you’re going to see the evolution of more autonomous driving vehicles, and I don’t mean without a driver, I mean [trucks having] lane control and other driver-assisted devices we have in passenger cars today that are not really in heavy-duty trucks. That will help accident and injury frequency of the sector. And I think you’ll continue to see government regulation advancing and more continuity across the United States, where today it is more regionalized and specific within the states. I think you’re beginning to see a more national overlay for the sector.”

Several U.K. communities in Lincolnshire County are separating paper from other commodities in their curbside recycling programs.

For the past 12 months, about 7,200 households in the United Kingdom’s Lincolnshire County have been testing a curbside dual-stream recycling program where those households separated clean, dry paper and old corrugated containers (OCC) into separate purple recycling bins. According to a news release from Lincolnshire County Council, the county plans to continue separate paper and OCC collection.

“Residents have been simply incredible and have really embraced this new initiative,” says Lincolnshire County Councilor Eddy Poll. “In the trial, we have collected almost 420 [metric tons] of clean, dry paper and card, all which has gone to local and U.K.-based paper mills to be made into paper-based products.

“This has saved many road miles, reduced carbon emissions and created a product which can be reused and recycled again—one of the key objectives from the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership’s strategic plan. As well as only putting paper and card in a separate bag/bin, residents have done a great job of only putting plastic pots, tubs and trays, glass, tin and cans in their recycling bins, significantly reducing the contamination and increasing recycling rates.”

Poll says the trial program will be expanded to all households in Lincolnshire over the next few years.

“We will work with residents to make sure they have the right size containers for their home, and in the run-up to the rollout, the council staff will run engagement sessions and workshops in the community to help residents get the right thing in the right bin,” he says.

The county’s Boston Borough will roll out the paper recycling program in the spring of 20221, followed by North Kesteven in the fall of 2021.

Tomra says machine connectivity delivers key production and service data to drive the strategic management process.

Connected machines and cloud-based data storage are transforming how businesses collect, access and analyze data, according to Tomra Sorting Recycling, a sensor-based sorting equipment manufacturer based in Germany. The company has released a new e-book, “Digitalization – Connect to Enhance Productivity in the Recycling Industry,” that looks at machine connectivity and data-driven process trends in the recycling industry.

Through embedded sensors and cloud-based reporting, optical sorters can provide data that drives strategic management processes, Tomra Recycling says in a news release on its new e-book. Near real-time data provides insights into production gaps, allows companies to react fast to change and improves recycled product quality and throughput.

Tomra says its new e-book is free to download. The e-book examines stored service reports, spare parts orders and product manuals that improve machine maintenance efficiency. The e-book also discusses how leveraged production data, combined with advanced analytics, may result in the development of new sorting technologies and processes.

Click here to learn more about Tomra Recycling’s new e-book.