Plenty to Sort Out

I was asked to offer a presentation on things we’re looking at in terms of changing our MRFs (material recovery facilities) to meet changing streams.

Metro Waste Paper Recovery is the largest recycler in Canada and we started in 1979. In 1995 Cascades Paper bought a controlling share in Metro Waste Paper and they now own 73 percent of the company. In 1999 we bought Norampac’s recycling division and that brought us down into the United States, where we have a number of facilities in New York State.

In 2003 we opened up the largest recycling facility in Canada, doing about 250,000 tons per year. It’s officially listed in Recycling Today as the second-largest MRF in North America. We process, as a company, about 1.5 million tons of material per year.

MIXING IT UP

We got a head start in curbside recycling in Ontario, starting in the mid-to-late 1980s. Our first programs had seven compartments in the container at the curb. Participants did all the sorting for you; a MRF was a table and a little sorting line, maybe.

You had three-color glass separation, all the plastics in one compartment, another compartment for just newspaper, another for corrugated, another one for boxboard. Most of our programs started out very fast—it wasn’t five or six materials, but 10, 12 or 14 materials—but the people did most of the sorting for us.

Where did we go from there? Today the strong emphasis is on single-stream. We don’t do any curbside sorting anymore, for the most part. Programs in Ontario are handling a minimum of 15 materials; most programs in Ontario are handling well over 20 materials, including materials you don’t even want to think about handling—but we handle them anyhow.

MRF equipment is continually advancing. Four of our MRFs use optical sorting either for containers and/or fibers. We have two facilities doing full fiber optical sorting thanks to equipment from MSS (Nashville, Tenn.)

Why less sorting at the curb? There was a push away from curbside sorting because it took too long, they said. Plus the MRF equipment is getting better, but it’s not there yet.

There are tremendous difficulties on the fiber side. There’s no such thing as a true No. 8 news grade anymore. I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t already know. Unfortunately, the equipment can’t do what we need it to do, and neither can the employees, considering the mix has gone from 80 percent news to 55 percent news in Toronto.

I know in other cities it’s a lot worse. We still have four daily newspapers in Toronto. There are cities in the United States that don’t have any dailies anymore, but we still carry four. So we still have more ONP (old newspapers) coming in than a lot of municipalities, but a lot less than we did seven years ago.

The funny thing is, when you talk to municipalities and ask, “Why is it you want to move to single stream?” The number one answer I get from the municipalities I talk to is that it’s too hard for the public to understand how to separate the containers from the fiber.

Now I used to work as a consultant for 18 years and I’ve been studying single-stream for more than 10 now, and when we rolled out these programs quite successfully 22 or 23 years ago, we got the public to separate into seven compartments—and some of the programs I worked on in the United States had 11 compartments, and we got the public to do it. But now all of a sudden they can’t figure out what a container looks like compared with a piece of paper?

DAILY CHALLENGES

Where are we going? MRFs need help to sort the plastic. There are too many plastics, even within one resin. Different types of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) can look like every different plastic resin within the system.

Technology continues to advance, but we still need help. Whether it’s a paper or a containers end market, buyers are concerned about a 20, 30 or 40 percent yield loss, which they are paying for at their mills.

The other thing to consider is this: We generate more than 1 million tons of recyclables in Ontario. If everything in the province were single-stream, there would be a $4 million loss to the system of containers and newspaper. That’s $4 per ton on 1 million tons. And it doesn’t get recycled—it goes to the wrong destination and gets thrown away.

When you think about what is our true impact of moving to single-stream, maybe municipalities aren’t fully aware of the true implications.

Plus, are we sorting what we’re supposed to be? We’re asking ourselves: Where do we take the next MRF? We just built a very large, very technologically advanced facility in Calgary, handling that city’s material. We have four optical sorters for fiber in that plant, and we’re already talking about turning it on its head completely. We may no longer try to get the newspaper cleaned by trying to get the boxboard out. It’s been very difficult for the machines to recognize boxboard from an insert.

So what we’ve asked is, “Why in the world don’t we turn it around and shoot the newspaper out and leave the mixed paper on the line?”

If we can then generate a good quality ONP that we can sell for sure at a higher value, it’s also better for our customers. And then the mixed paper is still mixed paper. With our current system, we are getting complaints that our ONP is too much like mixed paper. We have shipments going out right now that are about 88 percent usable fiber, 10 percent out-throws and 2 percent prohibitives. And that’s not acceptable.

If that’s not acceptable, and that’s with four machines and 10 sorters, how much more can you do?

PLASTIC PROBLEMS

When it comes to plastic, there are many different types of PET that need to go to different consuming destinations.

Plus you have PLA and other biodegradable bottles. There is not just one type of biodegradable resin out, there are now four biodegradable grades being produced.

Now if you’re a MRF operator and you’re wondering what to do to keep your PET clean, that presents a problem. Fortunately, optical sorters see the PLA (polylactic acid) distinctly from PET—it has a nice signature like PVC (polyvinyl chloride), so it is sorted out.

But at a smaller plant, you’re trying to teach manual sorters. You can try to do that by brand name—“look for this bottle and always throw it off.”

A fun one is a coffee creamer called International Delight. It’s an HDPE (high-density polyethylene) bottle when it’s the regular type, but when it’s International Delight Light, it’s made of PET. So now, you can’t even teach by brand recognition.

This container also has a full plastic jacket over it. Unless that jacket is made of PET and it’s covering the PET bottle, that’s another problem. And you can’t blame the optical sorting equipment for not knowing what’s underneath. If they had even left us an inch [exposed] at the top or the bottom, we’d probably be fine.

In addition to shrink labels, other issues include opaque and colored PET. Most consumers also don’t like thermoforms, and that’s another form of container we’re seeing added to [municipal recycling] programs.

The author is vice president of operations for Metro Waste Paper Recovery Inc., which is headquartered in Toronto. Lantz can be contacted at dlantz@metrowaste.com.