The state is adding wine and spirits containers to its recycling redemption program, though questions remain on costs, implementation of attached amendments.
First, the good news for recyclers across the state of California.
Sept. 27, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed off on S.B. 1013, which expands the state’s longstanding “bottle bill” to include wine and spirits containers in its California Redemption Value (CRV) funding starting Jan. 1, 2024. Funds are overseen by the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle).
Consumers will pay an extra 10 cents for most of those containers and 5 cents for mini bottles—known as nips—that contain 1.7 ounces of alcohol, but will be able to get that money back if they return bottles to a redemption center. Starting Jan. 1, 2025, consumers will pay an extra 25 cents for wine and spirits in boxes, bladders, pouches or other similar containers.
In a webinar breaking down the law’s expansion, Container Recycling Institute (CRI) President Susan Collins estimated that the addition of wine and liquor bottles in their various forms will increase the state’s glass beverage recycling rate from around 30 percent to 59 percent, with 500 million more containers being recycled per year.
CRI says curbside and drop-off programs are poised to see a $46 million revenue increase once wine and spirits bottles are added to collection.
Per the existing law, passed in 1987, consumers can redeem deposits of 5 cents on items such as beer cans and bottles, soda cans and plastic juice containers smaller than 24 ounces and of 10 cents on those containers over 24 ounces by turning their empties in to a recycling center. But when they place containers into their curbside recycling bins, haulers can bill the state for the CRV deposits.
Per CRI research, Californians buy about 1.3 billion bottles of wine and liquor per year.
According to Culver City, California-based CRI’s research, the expansion will help produce more clean recyclables for manufacturing; support more recycling jobs within the state; shift end-of-life costs for used beverage containers to producers; cut litter for those beverage categories in half; reduce 160,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions; and prevent pollution from manufacturing new containers from virgin materials.
From there, the news gets murkier.
Collins said around two dozen provisions were included in S.B. 1013 that will add nearly $900 million in recycling program spending over a six-year period. Another $379 million in recycling spending were passed via the A.B. 179 budget bill that CalRecycle will use for various local assistance, beverage container recycling and litter reduction efforts.
The state’s beverage container fund balance was last reported to be $635 million, Collins said in the webinar, meaning the increase of more than $1 billion in spending from the amended bills will cost more than what’s available in the state fund.
And the new programming outlined in the bills has yet to be ironed out.
During her webinar, Collins said that, starting in 2024, S.B. 1013 will require larger recycling convenience zones (CZs) throughout the state. The center of a CZ is typically a large supermarket, and a redemption center is required to be located within a half-mile radius in urban areas and 3 miles in rural areas.
Under the amended bill, the CZ radius will extend to 1 mile in urban areas and 5 miles in rural locales if the new CZ will be served by an existing recycling center—a change that Collins said hinders convenience for customers. The state currently has 1,265 redemption centers, a decline of more than 1,200 from 2013.
Collins said existing handling fee sites will retain eligibility to continue receiving those fees and will not be penalized for CZ distance changes.
Retailers will see a big change, however, with the bill’s elimination of “Option B,” where a retailer within a CZ could choose to pay $100 per day in lieu of accepting container returns. Starting in 2025, if a retailer is in a CZ with no recycling center, it will have to accept container redemptions in-store and deliver them to a recycling location or pay into a dealer cooperative where a group of stores can organize to provide redemption in one or more CZs.
CRI says the bill will decrease the percentage of retailers that can be granted a state exemption from 35 percent to 15 percent.
CalRecycle will spend 2023 creating regulations for dealer cooperatives, which it hopes to establish by 2024.
“There are no plans outlined on how dealer cooperatives will work,” Collins said. “[Retailers] can organize into any group. There could be five retailers [in a cooperative] in an area, or all of them.”
The amended S.B. 1013 calls for a host of new spending and recycling programs.
One of the largest is a market development payment to glass beverage container manufacturers that can total up to $60 million per year from Jan. 1, 2023, to Jan. 1, 2028, so long as funds are available. It is designed to incentivize manufacturers to purchase recycled glass to use in making new beverage containers in-state.
The new spending also takes the form of three glass processing incentive grants that total $9 million. The Recycled Glass Processing Incentive Grant Program will award up to $4 million per year to stimulate the increased use of glass cullet in making new glass beverage containers in the state. The Increased Recycling of Empty Glass Beverage Containers Grant Program will award up to $4 million per year, and CRI said it is aimed at funding regional pilot programs to provide bins and collect empty glass beverage containers from restaurants and licensed liquor establishments and transport them for recycling. Local governments and other entities also will be eligible. The Empty Glass Beverage Transportation Grant Program will provide $1 million per year to facilitate rail transportation of empty glass beverage containers to glass processing facilities within the state.
In the webinar, Collins said the three grant programs go into effect Jan. 1, 2023, well before CRI expects an influx of glass beverage containers to enter the recycling stream.
“The timing is a little wacky,” she said. “We don’t see more glass coming in until wine and spirits are added.”
Notably, the bill establishes $15 million per year for curbside and neighborhood drop-off programs and $15 million annually in Glass Quality Incentive Payments (QIPs) that will only include glass used to manufacture beverage containers, excluding cullet used in fiberglass. Additional changes include the elimination of a daily load limit for dealers delivering returned empty beverage containers to recycling centers. CRV labels on containers will allow for QR codes, with manufacturers allowed to self-certify their labels. Wine and spirits are exempt from the new CRV labeling requirements until July 1, 2025.
A.B. 179 includes more than $233 million in funding for CalRecycle to use in 2023 for local assistance, beverage container recycling and litter reduction, including $73 million for startup costs for items such as recycling programs, recycling centers, mobile recycling, reverse vending machines and bag drops, and $30 million for startup loans for processors and recyclers.
Over a three-year period, CRI says A.B. 179 would cost $379 million.
The company says increasing consumer interest in recycling is vital to the reduction of plastics going to landfill.
Bower, a technology company based in Stockholm, Sweden, has recently finished a pilot program in Los Angeles that could improve collection rates for the waste and recycling industry nationwide. For the program, the company launched the Bower App in Los Angeles in July with the participation of local grocery stores.
“We chose Los Angeles because of how far they have gone regarding recycling and sustainability consciousness,” says Suwar Mert, co-founder of Bower. “While we are still processing the data we collected through the program, our goal is to take all the knowledge that we get from this pilot and launch it across the United States.”
According to the company, users register by taking a photo of their method of recycling collection. The app then verifies where the user is and if it is an accepted method of recycling, like blue bins provided by a curbside recycling program. Once registered, users can scan the barcode on a package, deposit it in a designated recycling point like a bin or a material recovery facility and then be rewarded directly through the app. Accepted drop-off spots will be geographically pinpointed so that users can locate convenient spots to drop off their items.
Mert says that Bower has partnered with more than 100 companies for this app, including Nestle, Dove and Purina. Once a product is recycled, the user gets rewarded in Bower points which can be redeemed at one of the brands for discounts, coupons or other rewards. It can also be redeemed for money once a user hits 100 Bower points that can either be donated to various types of charities or deposited as money. How much an item depends on the material and type of container it is. If a container is nonrecyclable, Mert says the app will tell the user and explain why it can’t be recycled.
“What we want to do is make sure that there isn't anything called trash anymore,” Mert says. “We know that giving recycled items value actually increases the collection rates and when you increase the collection rates, then it becomes also interesting for factories and recyclers to start recycling that product because enough of it is collected.”
Mert adds if small pockets of people can learn exactly what can and can’t be recycled, it will empower communities to make changes to how they go about recycling. The app can improve collection rates through recycling education and incentives to encourage positive recycling behavior.
However, while the immediate benefits help the users, Mert says the app can also inform waste and recycling operations. Through a user agreement, Bower would provide the information collected through the Bower app to hauling companies that could improve how waste and recycling are collected.
The data can show what routes get the most recycling and what ones don't. This helps companies improve how they collect recycling, while also cutting down on expenses like gas. Since data can assist companies with route maintenance, it also helps improve maintenance of vehicles and reduce carbon emissions. Bower recently signed a contract with FTI, a package and paper collection association in Sweden to use the app to improve logistics.
The idea for the app was created in 2015. Mert developed the idea originally to increase the recycling of cotton bags in Sweden. After pivoting a few times, the company launched the current version of the app, which primarily focuses on polyethylene terephthalate-based products in 2019. Since then, it has become one of the most popular apps. The app has 320,000 international users helping to save more than 1,000 metric tons of CO2 to date. In July, 1.9 million plastic packages were scanned and recycled via Bower.
Now that the pilot has ended, Mert says the company plans to scale it to the entire state of California. While it’s unclear how quickly the app will be scaled,Mert has plans to expand it nationally after completing its scale in California.
Mert says the app was patented in Sweden and it has patents pending in Europe and the United States. In March this year, Bower raised $4.7M to expand globally.
The recycling and rolling plant will supply 600,000 metric tons of finished aluminum goods primarily to the beverage container market.
Novelis?Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, has begun construction on its $2.5 billion recycling and rolling plant in Bay Minette, Alabama. The facility is expected to create up to 1,000 new jobs and add 600,000 tons of finished aluminum goods capacity per year for the beverage container market, with the flexibility for automotive production, the company says. It also will add a new recycling center for used beverage cans (UBCs), increasing Novelis’ recycling capacity from 74 billion UBCs to 90 million annually.
The company says the facility will be the first fully integrated aluminum mill built in the U.S. in 40 years.
Novelis welcomed nearly 200 attendees to its Oct. 7 groundbreaking celebration, including Gov. Kay Ivey, Congressman Jerry Carl and several local leaders and community representatives.
"Through this investment, we want to demonstrate the strength of our growing customer partnerships, the commitment we have to sustainably grow our business and the innovative, forward-thinking approach we are taking to modern manufacturing," said Steve Fisher, president and CEO of Novelis, during the groundbreaking. "We are especially proud to celebrate our groundbreaking of this state-of-the-art facility on National Manufacturing Day, which highlights the exciting career opportunities available in our industry."
Novelis says it has hired its core leadership team to lead the multiyear effort to build the facility and is recruiting for open roles in engineering, maintenance, finance, human resources and information technology. Interested candidates can visit www.novelis.com/careers to search for available positions or submit their resumes for consideration as additional roles become available.
Within the next three months, the company says it will build two new roadways on-site and expand the utility infrastructure necessary to begin building construction. Commissioning of the facility is scheduled for mid-2025.
Novelis says it selected a leading engineering company as its site layout, engineering and construction contractor, an Alabama-based firm to serve as earthworks contractor and several manufacturing equipment providers that have longstanding relationships with Novelis across the world.
According to a previous announcement from Novelis, the facility will have several environmental features and will aim to be net carbon neutral for Scope 1 and 2 emissions. It will be powered primarily by renewable energy, use recycled water and be a zero-waste facility. Additionally, the plant will rely on rail transportation, which can reduce logistics-related carbon emissions by up to 70 percent compared with over-the-road transport.
"Today marks an important milestone for our Novelis team as we ramp up construction and grow our team," said Tom Boney, executive vice president and President of Novelis North America, at the groundbreaking ceremony. "We seek to become an integral part of this community, contributing to the local economy and advancing residents' quality of life every step of the way.
"We are grateful for the support we have received from the state, Baldwin County, Bay Minette and other partners as we build our home here in Alabama," he added.
During the groundbreaking ceremony, Boney also announced the company's plans to invest $150,000 in south Alabama nonprofit organizations over the next six months.
Novelis says it also encouraged attendees to recycle their beverage cans and cups at the event in partnership with Mobile Coca-Cola Bottling Co. To encourage recycling throughout the community, Novelis has launched a partnership with Baldwin County to provide recycling bins and education at all county-owned buildings. The company says it plans to invest in additional opportunities to encourage and incentivize Alabamans to recycle more often.
The Bay Minette groundbreaking follows the company’s May groundbreaking in Guthrie, Kentucky, on a $365 million investment in an advanced recycling center that will be able to cast 240,000 tons of sheet ingot for its automotive customers per year.
Novelis is a subsidiary of Hindalco Industries Ltd., an industry leader in aluminum and copper and the metals flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai, India.
The company now has moved to 100 percent recycled fibers at the Hartsville facility, eliminating the complex’s virgin pulp processing and chemical recovery operation.
Sonoco has announced the new uncoated recycled paperboard (URB) No. 10 machine at its Hartsville, South Carolina, mill complex now is operational after being converted from a corrugated medium machine. The $125 million investment to update the machine previously was announced in April 2020 as part of the Hartsville-based packaging producer’s Project Horizon initiative.
“The machine was designed to be one of the largest and lowest-cost producers of URB in the world—paving the way for the future of our Hartsville paper mill complex and our global position as a high-quality URB provider,” Sonoco Chief Operating Officer Rodger Fuller says. “With the state-of-the-art capabilities, Sonoco is able to produce a wider range of high-value paper grades to serve our industrial and consumer converted products businesses and external trade customers.”
Sonoco procures nearly one-third of its U.S. and Canadian URB at the 100-year-old Hartsville facility, and according to the company, Project Horizon was initiated, in part, to ensure the long-tern viability and sustainability of the complex.
The launch of the URB No. 10 machine also marks Sonoco’s move to 100-percent-recycled fibers in Hartsville, eliminating the virgin pulp processing and chemical recovery operation at that facility. The company says the move to 100-percent-recycled fiber is expected to reduce electricity consumption, driving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and total water use.
Previously, the No. 10 machine utilized 50 percent recycled and 50 percent virgin hardwood fibers to produce corrugated medium.
Sonoco projects the introduction of the new operation to drive $30 million in annual cost savings by 2024, and, as previously planned, the “less efficient” Nos. 1 and 9 cylinder machines will permanently be shut down by the end of October, reducing annual capacity by 70,000 tons.
“The startup of the No. 10 machine is an important milestone for Sonoco to demonstrate our ability to update and improve longstanding machines to meet changing market conditions and better serve our customers,” Fuller says. “We congratulate and thank the entire Sonoco team and our valuable suppliers for their efforts to execute this successful project.”
The machine will have a range of grade and caliper sizes, two offline slitter/rewinders to offer improved ribbon quality and precise, narrow-width slitting and lower variability across the machine width to create a more consistent product.
Project Horizon also includes other updates to the Hartsville complex:
Sonoco operates 23 paper mills globally with an annual capacity of 2.1 million tons, and the company says its new URB machine will be the world’s largest, with 500 tons of daily production capacity, compared with its next largest machine with 300 tons per day of production.
The company operates 11 URB mills and 18 machines in South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Massachusetts, Kansas, Wisconsin, California, Washington and Ontario.
A portion of the Global Methane, Climate and Clean Air Forum, the tour illustrates the potential of enclosed anaerobic digestion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Bioenergy Devco, Annapolis, Maryland, and its Italian subsidiary, BTS Biogas, welcomed a group of policymakers, industry leaders, technical experts and researchers from around the world to view its facility in Jessup, Maryland, which the company says is the largest enclosed food waste recycling anaerobic digester in the United States.
The tour—a portion of the Global Methane, Climate and Clean Air Forum—was an opportunity for the international group from the Environmental Protection Agency, Global Methane Initiative and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to learn about the ability of community-scale anaerobic digestion to reduce methane and other climate pollutants and to create renewable energy.
“We are thrilled to have hosted such an esteemed group of global experts across the broader sustainable energy and food waste industries and to demonstrate the significant environmental benefits of converting organic waste streams into environmentally friendly byproducts in our Jessup facility,” Bioenergy Devco founder and CEO Shawn Kreloff says.
The Maryland Bioenergy Center–Jessup processes 110,000 tons of food waste annually, helping to decarbonize organic waste streams in the greater Baltimore and Washington, D.C., region. Anaerobic digestion is a biological process that naturally transforms food waste, such as fats, oils, food processing waste, proteins and fresh-cut produce, into renewable energy and nutrient-rich soil products.
“The anaerobic digestion technology we employ is a completely natural process that helps keep our air, water and soil cleaner while simultaneously returning nutrients to the soil and providing renewable energy,” Kreloff adds.
Unlike most anaerobic digestion facilities in the United States, Bioenergy Devco operates enclosed food waste co-digestion facilities, allowing for multiple waste streams to coexist in the anaerobic digestion process while maximizing energy yield. This technology provides a non-fossil fuel source of energy to power communities while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane.
Kreloff says the growth of the industry is driven by regulations at all levels within the United States.
“There has been a considerable amount of growth and momentum behind anaerobic digestion driven in part by [an] enhanced focus by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, as well as new state and federal level waste diversion and methane reduction legislation,” he says. “We will continue to work toward our mission of driving environmentally sustainable recycling of food and other organic waste.”
Bioenergy Devco, Annapolis, Maryland, and its Italian subsidiary, BTS Biogas, welcomed a group of policymakers, industry leaders, technical experts and researchers from around the world to view its facility in Jessup, Maryland, which the company says is the largest enclosed food waste recycling anaerobic digester in the United States.