Juno begins processing waste from King County, Washington

Juno, a recycling technology pioneered by Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific (GP), has begun processing waste from King County, Washington, as the municipality has starting exploring opportunities to divert waste from landfills. The 12-week mixed waste processing pilot project began Feb. 28.

King County estimates that 70 percent of recyclable material, more than 600,000 tons per year, remains in the county’s waste stream despite robust curbside recycling programs. The county’s solid waste division is analyzing how Juno can help meet goals under the county’s Re+ initiative, which aims to reduce the amount of materials that need to be processed by keeping them in use longer and recovering economically valuable resources that now get buried in a landfill.

GP developed the technology to recycle highly contaminated recovered fiber and mixed materials, piloting it at its plant in Savannah, Georgia, starting in 2013.

The Juno commercial unit began processing local solid waste in Toledo, Oregon, in 2021. The material recovery facility (MRF) uses autoclaving, a process typically used by hospitals to sterilize waste materials. After the autoclaving, separation technologies sort materials into different commodity streams, such as paper, plastics and metals. The recovered fiber is used by GP’s containerboard mill in Toledo, located next to the MRF, to make linerboard for corrugated boxes. Other items, such as metals and plastics, are sold to other consumers.

GP says Juno has almost tripled landfill diversion rates in Toledo in its first year of operation, with an annual capacity of 60,000 tons to 70,000 tons. Future installations will be capable of processing 300,000 tons of waste annually using additional sorting equipment and the ability to capture biogas, driving potential diversion rates to 90 percent.

RELATED: King County, Washington, pilot shows potential solutions for recycling plastic wraps and bags

“We are really excited about the diversion potential of mixed waste processing technologies like Juno,” says Pat McLaughlin, King County Solid Waste Division director. “Mixed waste processing, alongside other waste reduction, prevention and recycling initiatives, has the potential to be an important piece of our long-term plans to reduce the amount of garbage going to the landfill and lower our carbon footprint here in King County.”

Through a patented wet waste processing solution designed to separate, sanitize and wash food and other organic debris, Juno captures previously unrecoverable paper fibers in the waste stream, including cups with plastic coatings and paper-based packaging with food contamination. In addition to recapturing paper fiber, other recyclable materials like metals and plastics are reclaimed for new beneficial uses.

“Juno has a revolutionary approach to waste diversion that is helping communities reach their sustainability goals without having to change the waste collection infrastructure,” Juno President Christer Henriksson says. “Contamination is the biggest barrier communities face as they try to increase recycling rates. Juno is proven to help solve this problem.”

For more than a decade, GP says it researched better ways to recover more fiber from waste streams and help increase paper recycling. The company developed and patented Juno as an environmentally and economically responsible solution to increase recycling and recovery.