Short History of Recycling in the Midwest

Rumpke's former Recycling Director Steve Sargent discusses 20 years of recycling and what the future holds for the industry in this two-part series.

What year did you enter the recycling industry and why?

Steve_Sargent_2011I entered the recycling business in 1980 as an administer at PICCA, Inc. in Circleville, Ohio. Our community was dealing with the closure of our local landfill and seeking alternatives. I wrote a grant application for a collection vehicle and containers to start recycling glass from the local Coca-Cola bottling company. PICCA expanded to become the largest, non-profit recycling operation in Ohio, and was purchased by Rumpke in 1989.

What items were acceptable at the time?

In 1980, primarily metal scrap, cardboard and high grade paper. Limited regional markets were available for glass, newspaper and some industrial plastic scrap. Aluminum cans were just entering the beverage markets at the time.

What players were involved in the industry?

Recycling in the Midwest was represented by many family-run businesses, usually scrap metal or paper recycling. Even the large haulers at that time transported their recyclables to these family-run companies. In the mid-1980s, curbside recycling began and we started to see large public haulers enter the recycling business.

Rumpke's story dates back to 1932!

How was recycling processed?

Early on, processing technology was non-existent. Generally, all commodities (paper, plastics, metals, glass) had to be separated by hand and delivered to recycling centers that way. That began to change by the late 1980s.

What markets or end users existed?

In the early 1980s, markets existed for all types of fiber (paper), primarily cardboard. Several paper mills operated in the Midwest and Ohio Valley, consuming only a few hundred tons a day of fiber. Today, those mills are all closed.

Aluminum cans became a desired commodity in the mid-1980s with many of the large beverage companies supporting efforts at local buy-back centers to secure additional volumes.

The largest consumer of glass containers at that time was the Owens-Illinois plant in Huntington, West Virginia. Today, that plant is closed. Plastic bottles didn't emerge until the late 1980s. The Haviland Drainage Company became a large consumer of our #2 plastic bottles in the late 1980s and that relationship continues today.

Did you know you could leave the lids on your plastic bottles for recycling? Get more recycling tips and facts.

Describe the transition of recycling in the late '80s and early '90s

In the early 1990s, dual stream collection and processing began in our market area. Gone were the days of separating each commodity at the point of generation (home) and collecting the material in trucks with (up to) seven different compartments. Dual stream allowed all the containers to be collected together with paper and cardboard separated into a separate bin on the truck. Dual collection dramatically reduced collection costs and provided the opportunity to process marketable materials. Rumpke designed and built five dual stream recycling facilities by 1996 in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. This provided the foundation for single stream processing in the next decade.

What new markets began to develop in the 1990s?

While the packaging industry was trying to respond to the changing consumer and environmental demands in the early 1990s, plastic recycling markets grew significantly. Unfortunately, the wide variety of plastic resins used in manufacturing presented challenges causing many of the early plastic ventures to go bankrupt.

The paper industry also underwent a major consolidation. Most small paper mills closed because of limited capacity or outdated technology. New mills using 100 percent scrap paper were being developed. New pulping technologies also provided additional cleaning capacity for mills.

How did technology change or adjust?

We strived to process more recyclables from mixed recycling collection. We were consistently weighing collection costs with our ability to provide clean materials to the market. Ultimately, as a collector and processor, if our cost of doing business couldn't be paid by our customers of the revenue we received from the sale of recyclables, these programs would be in jeopardy. Along with striving to meet many new state legislative mandates, such as Ohio House Bill 592, technology had to change to sustain these programs.

What are some of the new recycling innovations, markets and other changes that have emerged in the past decade?

Single stream collection and processing have become the way our industry does business. New technologies have helped us meet challenges. During the past decade, recycling markets in our region have gone from primarily domestic to international. Recyclables are shipped overseas often at the same rate they are shipped to destinations within this country.

Learn more about single stream recycling.OpticalScanner

Recycling is a commodity-based business. Our industry and our customers must understand we are impacted by commodity markets. It is our goal to minimize the impact of these markets on our business model. We are doing that in several ways, including investing in the newest optical sortation equipment (pictured on the right) and developing our own markets for mixed glass.

What changes do you predict in the future for recycling?

I predict we will see changes in fiber and glass markets. There is no question that newspaper is declining annually. Many of the large U.S. recycling facilities will no longer produce newspaper within five years. With more cardboard packaging entering our recycling stream, mixed paper markets may have to absorb greater volumes. A lot depends on the current newspaper markets and their ability to offer a consistent home and a fair price.

Much work is still needed in glass recycling. Rumpke has had some success at recovering mixed color glass from our recycling facilities and transporting it to our Dayton Glass Plant for final processing. It is extremely challenging, requiring substantial capital while trying to meet our container glass industry specifications. We must work cooperatively with the glass manufacturing industry to formulate a sustainable solution for glass.

Our future success in recycling lies mainly in our ability to produce marketable, contaminant-free materials to end-users. At Rumpke, we will continue to improve the single-stream system. Besides contamination issues, the health and safety of our workers is paramount in our belief that recyclables must be removed prior to the waste stream and collected separately.