NWRA Announces 2024 Recycling Awards Recipients
Arlington, VA – The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) announced its 2024 Recycling Awards recipients, recognizing innovators and leaders in the recycling and waste industry. Awards are given in five categories to private companies and municipalities that have made substantial contributions to global recycling efforts through partnerships, public education and innovations in recycling facilities. This year’s winners were selected by a panel of independent judges who are professionals in the recycling and waste industry.
“This year’s awardees represent a shift to a circular economy embracing more reuse, reduction and recycling,” said NWRA President and CEO Michael E. Hoffman. “Through their innovative design, modernized facilities, education programs and dedication to finding new and more ways to reuse waste, the industry is leading economically viable solutions to a circular economy.”
The 2024 NWRA Recycling Awards recipients:
Sustainability Game Changer of the Year: Republic Services’ Polymer Center in Las Vegas.
The 71,000-square-foot Polymer Center is a secondary processing facility that takes baled plastics from MRFs and processes it into recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) flake and color-sorted high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene that can be made into new packaging. It is capable of processing 10 tons of PET and olefin plastics per hour (80,000 tons per year) utilizing 17 optical sorters, a combination of both near-infrared and medium-infrared optical units and other advanced equipment. This facility is an important step toward Republic’s 2030 environmental, social and governance goal of increasing the recovery and circularity of key materials by 40%. Republic is developing a national network of Polymer Centers, following the successful startup of the Las Vegas Polymer Center, that will sustainably support a circular economy with PET and olefin plastics for years to come. This network is designed as a hub-and-spoke model, with local recycling facilities supplying sorted PET, HDPE and olefin to a regional Polymer Center for secondary sortation. Construction of the company’s second Polymer Center is underway in Indianapolis and is expected to open by the end of 2024.
Recycling Facility of the Year: LRS’ Exchange Materials Recovery Facility in Chicago.
The Exchange MRF opened in 2023 and represents a decade-long vision for a facility fueled by conserving natural resources and utilizing the latest technological advances. It can process one million pounds of recyclables every day. The Exchange MRF was designed in partnership with CP Equipment, the city of Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development and LRS team members and aims to help the city of Chicago achieve its residential waste diversion goal of 90% by 2040.
Recycling Facility of the Year Honorable Mention: GFL Environmental’s Materials Recovery Facility in Horicon, Wisconsin.
The 133,000-square-foot Wisconsin MRF processes single stream material from approximately 50,000 commercial customers, 150 municipal customers and serves more than 225,000 curbside residential recycling customers. The MRF is outfitted with a Scalping Auger Screen as opposed to a traditional staffed pre-sort line, eight optical sorters, three plastic film/bag capture systems, two single-ram balers, one two-ram baler and more. The MRF’s processing system was designed to be flexible with maximum recovery and quality of product in mind. Additionally, it offers expansion areas for future equipment upgrades, including additional optics, in-feeds and sorting lines.
Excellence in Recycling Public Education: Recology King County in Seattle.
Recology King County’s public education and outreach program is run with the goal of “a world without waste.” To achieve its goal, it focuses on practices that increase participation in recycling and composting programs, decrease contamination, encourage reuse and engage the entire community. Recology conducts tabling events, MRF tours, site visits, recycling workshops and waste audits; distributes service guides, social media posts and quarterly bill inserts; and operates a Slotted Lid Program, four recycling-focused retail stores, an artist-in-residence program, an Environmental Education Center and a School Outreach Program, furthering its education reach.
Recycling Equipment Innovator of the Year: Machinex Technologies’ Next-Generation MRF in Coventry, England.
The Machinex Next-Generation MRF, operated by Sherbourne Recycling Limited in Coventry, England, features an advanced integration of 19 SamurAI sorting robots, 14 optical sorters (including 13 MACH Hyspec optical sorters), a MACH Vision stream composition analyzer and multiple MACH Intell platforms facility-wide. The combination of these cutting-edge technologies means the facility is capable of processing 52 tons per hour of residential single stream recyclables while maintaining 95% plant and equipment availability. This high level of automation allows the MRF to achieve purity levels of up to 99% for targeted commodities and material recovery rates exceeding 98%.
Organics Management Facility of the Year: City of Quebec’s Biomethanization Center of the Agglomeration of Quebec (CBAQ) in Quebec, Canada.
Comprised of two sectors—the Organic Material Recovery Center and the Organic Material Methanization Center—CBAQ is capable of processing 80 tons per hour, 250,000 tons of municipal solid waste per year and 65,000 tons of organic material per year from more than 300,000 households. Equipped with optical sorters and other advanced technologies, the facility decomposes food waste in a controlled process, converting it into renewable natural gas and soil amendment to enhance soil quality.
The 2024 NWRA Recycling Awards recipients will be recognized at NWRA’s 2024 Executive Leadership Roundtable held October 14-16 in Savannah, Georgia.
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ABOUT NWRA
The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) represents the private sector recycling and waste services industry. Association members conduct business in all 50 states and Canada and include companies managing the collection and disposal of solid, industrial, medical and construction and demolition waste; companies managing recycling processing and renewable energy; equipment manufacturers and distributors; and a variety of other service providers. For more information about NWRA, please visit www.wasterecycling.org.
Contact
Mallory Szczepanski
National Waste & Recycling Association
mszczepanski@wasterecycling.org
616-644-6066
