GreenWaste Recovery invests in BioCellection

San Jose, California-based GreenWaste Recovery Inc. partnered with the city of San Jose to invest in BioCellection, a startup business that is working to find a solution for hard-to-recycle plastics. The startup is led by Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao. Their technology is designed to turn plastics into renewable chemicals that can be used to make paints, coatings, automotive parts, apparel, electronics, solvents and fragrances. BioCellection targets plastics that are often landfilled because they are contaminated with organic material.

GreenWaste Recovery has provided hauling and processing services to the city of San Jose since its start in 1991, and it regularly partners with the city to try to find what it calls more efficient ways to integrate new technology.

“We are always implementing pilot programs and looking for ways to add new technology in the services we provide,” says Emily Finn, director of business development and communications at GreenWaste Recovery. 

Finn says the city of San Jose connected GreenWaste Recovery with BioCellection about two years ago when Wang and Yao introduced their project. This year, the city and company partnered with BioCellection on a three-phase pilot program for BioCellection to focus on polyethylene (PE) that includes plastics No. 2 and No. 4 and most film plastics, which make up a substantial amount of the municipal residual waste stream.

“The partnership that we developed with GreenWaste started about two years ago,” Wang says. “But we formally entered into the agreement in 2018. We presented what we’re doing to the city government and talked about how we needed some help to get to know more about the problems [with recycling plastics]. They took us on trips where we visited major waste facilities that were serving San Jose, [materials recovery facilities] and GreenWaste. It was clear to us that targeting polyethylene, No. 2 and No. 4 plastics, was going to be a good target for us.” 

GreenWaste Recovery owns a materials recovery facility (MRF) in San Jose that processes recyclable materials, yard trimmings and municipal solid waste. The GreenWaste Recovery MRF processes recyclable materials from more than 40 jurisdictions, sorting film plastics and other container plastics by polymer type. When BioCellection presented its technology, GreenWaste Recovery saw it as an opportunity. 

“One interesting fact to us is the technology they were using would effectively target polymers and separate them out to a virgin quality, so there’s no degradation in quality,” Finn says. “A couple of other things that were interesting is the fact that they could target different kinds of plastics. The pilot program is specifically looking at PE. For the most part, GreenWaste almost always has had a market for film plastic, but what we haven’t had is a market for dirtier film plastics. BioCellection is scaling up the ability to recover those plastics despite being soiled, dirty, different colors.” 

Both GreenWaste Recovery and the city of San Jose decided to invest $240,000 to BioCellection’s three-phase pilot program, each contributing $120,000. BioCellection currently has the ability to process two kilograms of plastic per day at a lab.

“Altogether, the development for getting to where we are now was about $1 million,” Wang says. “Our company paid for the rest of the cost.” 

By March 2019, Wang says BioCellection plans to have a unit that can process 500 kilograms of plastics per day.

“The idea is it’s a self-contained unit that could be dropped off at any material recovery facility,” Finn adds. “Rather than us shipping off plastic to a port, it stays domestically on site to be processed.” 

By the end of 2019, Wang says she hopes to have a commercial unit that can process five tons of plastic per day. 

“We’re working on diverting waste that doesn’t have a market,” Wang says. “Our partners have created the optimal environment to accelerate our innovation. We’re working hard to bring this to full scale first in San Jose and then expand to additional areas across the nation.”