Industry veteran Ralph Velocci dies

Waste Pro, Longwood, Florida, has announced that Ralph Velocci died July 15 at the at age of 72.

Velocci most recently was a senior vice president at Waste Pro and a member of the company’s board of directors.

Velocci grew up in Long Island, New York, where he got his start in the industry working on his father’s garbage trucks. According to the company, he first worked with Waste Pro founder John Jennings in the 1990s at USA Waste when the company acquired Waste Management, and later reconnected with Jennings at Waste Pro in 2009. From there, Velocci led Waste Pro’s commercial sales and oversaw the company’s landfill and recycling operations.

According to a statement from the company, “Velocci made a difference in the lives of people around him. He acted as a mentor to many in the company and industry, generously offering his time, knowledge and expertise. He was beloved and respected by his family, friends, all of his Waste Pro family, and will be greatly missed.”

“Ralph was an exceptional businessman. He loved the simple things around him and never took for granted how fortunate he was,” Jennings says. “He was the son of Italian immigrants who lived the American Dream, with a strong personality whose impact will last a long time.”

EQT Infrastructure to acquire Covanta in $5.3B deal

Sweden-based EQT Infrastructure, a global investment organization, has acquired Covanta Holding Corp. in an effort to "accelerate the company’s journey towards becoming the most sustainable provider of waste disposal services."

Under the terms of the agreement, shareholders will receive $20.25 in cash per share of Covanta's common stock in a transaction valued at $5.3 billion, including the assumption of Covanta’s net debt obligations. The purchase price represents a 37 percent premium to Covanta’s unaffected share price of $14.86 on June 8, the day prior to initial media speculation on the transaction.

The acquisition is subject to Covanta shareholder approval, as well as customary government approvals, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

“We are pleased to announce this agreement with EQT,” says Michael Ranger, president and CEO of Covanta. “Our comprehensive analysis during the past nine months has been singularly focused on enhancing value for our shareholders. EQT certainly recognizes the value we see in our business, and this transaction represents an excellent outcome of our strategic review.

"Furthermore, as an organization dedicated to sustainability and environmental stewardship, EQT shares our vision for a safer, cleaner and more prosperous future through sustainable waste management, thereby ensuring no waste is ever wasted. We couldn’t ask for a better partner as we embark on this next phase of our company’s evolution, delivering on our goal of building a sustainable future for all stakeholders.”

Covanta is currently the world’s leading waste-to-energy provider, operating facilities in North America, Europe and the U.K. Annually, Covanta’s 40-plus facilities process approximately 21 million tons of waste from municipalities and businesses and convert it into renewable electricity to power over 1 million homes.

Following the completion of the acquisition, EQT says it will work with Covanta’s management team to build upon the company’s strengths, such as its portfolio of assets that provide essential waste services to municipalities and commercial customers, its long-term community relationships and its numerous growth opportunities, including a robust U.K. project pipeline of new waste-to-energy infrastructure and Covanta’s Environmental Solutions platform.

Covanta will maintain its corporate headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey, and its management team is expected to remain in place.

“EQT and Covanta are proven business leaders who share a like-minded approach to environmental stewardship, and this acquisition aligns directly with EQT’s thematic approach of investing in sustainable businesses that have a positive impact on society,” says Alex Darden, partner within EQT Infrastructure’s Advisory Team. “EQT is excited to partner with the entire Covanta team and to invest in organizational, operational and digital technology initiatives that will enhance Covanta’s ability to provide sustainable solutions to growing waste challenges. As a responsible investor, EQT is committed to working with Covanta on transforming and supporting the energy transition and circular economy across its local communities.”

Barclays served as lead financial advisor to EQT Infrastructure, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel in connection with the transaction. Credit Suisse and TD Securities also served as financial advisors to EQT Infrastructure.

Kinderhook announces merger of Circon Environmental, Chemtron Corp. and KilnDirect Inc.

Kinderhook Industries LLC, New York City, has announced the merger of La Porte, Texas-based Circon Environmental; Avon, Ohio-based Chemtron Corp.; and Sumter, South Carolina-based KilnDirect Inc. Each company was an existing portfolio company of Kinderhook and will be rebranded under the Circon Environmental name.

According to a Kinderhook release, “the merger will create a leading pure-play provider of sustainable waste management solutions.”

Circon, Chemtron and KilnDirect each are dedicated to the engineering and processing of nonhazardous and hazardous waste streams to create fuel replacements to traditional natural gas and coal. Kinderhook says the vertically integrated platform will have the scale and capabilities to provide end-to-end environmental solutions on a national level for waste generators across all end markets.

“We are excited to combine three successful companies to create an ESG-focused environmental solutions platform. We believe the lack of a pure-play sustainability-focused provider of scale in the market creates a unique opportunity for the combined company, and we look forward to building this consolidated platform with our management team,” Rob Michalik, managing director at Kinderhook, says.

Frank Iezzi, who will serve as CEO of the combined platform, adds, “We are excited to welcome in Chemtron and KilnDirect into our growing family of companies. Through the addition of the Chemtron and KilnDirect teams, Circon’s expertise will be even stronger as we expand the products and services we offer with a focus on delivering an ever-growing level of sustainable environmental solutions to our customers.”

Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago, served as legal counsel to Kinderhook. Financing for the transaction was provided by Chicago-based Twin Brook Capital.

Every year across North America, the end of May means move-out season for many college students. As a resident of a college town in the Northeast, I knew the time was coming late this spring, but after all was said and done, I was not prepared to see my quaint town buried under so much stuff. Like other college towns, students rent houses throughout the downtown area. In my neighborhood, every block had at least one house with 10-plus garbage bags in front of it. This made me ask, “Why do we get rid of stuff on a seasonal basis, and what stuff are we getting rid of exactly?”

Looking around my apartment, I observed my stuff typically falls into one of three categories: impulse purchases, gifts from others, and necessities. Items in each of these categories have their own lifespan determined by their value and function. For me, impulse purchases typically have the shortest lifespan, gifts the longest, and necessities have a range somewhere in between.

Sometime in my early 20s, I discovered a documentary on minimalism—the art of living with less. I became hooked on the idea of reducing the amount of stuff I owned. I limited my impulse purchases, sported a utilitarian wardrobe, and weighed the usefulness of a purchase for weeks before actually bringing it home. The one area of accumulation I could not seem to control, however, was gifts. With every birthday, holiday and major life event, I received more and more gifts from family and friends. Despite my best efforts, trying to convey my desire for a minimalist lifestyle was futile. I loved the meaning and good intentions behind the gifts, but soon, many items I owned were knickknacks, or as my grandmother calls them, “dust collectors.” Even when these items may hold relatively low material value, I tend to keep gifts for much longer than impulse purchases because of their sentimental value.

Assuming others are like me and tend to hold onto sentimental stuff, the question begs, “What do we keep throwing out year after year en masse?”

After a brief walk-by examination of the local move-out trash this spring, I observed that most bags were mixed trash that included recyclables, old food and unwanted items like clothes hangers, broken mirrors and abandoned shower caddies. Relics of college life abounded—the mass-produced, cheap, brightly colored items that are a staple for every dorm room or first-time apartment. Unfortunately, their affordability and ease of replacement also make them a staple in the overflowing trash bins each year.

We now live in a world where in just a few clicks of a keyboard or phone, we can have a similar or perhaps even better item delivered to our doors almost instantly. As an item’s replaceability increases, the resistance to tossing that item decreases. This might be a key reason so much of our stuff is left behind in those early college/young adult/rental years. In essence, the ease of replacement makes the value of the item plummet.

But it is not just college students to blame for this seasonal explosion of waste. According to a survey done by The Cleaning Institute, 69 percent of households partake in spring cleaning every year, and only 10 percent of households never spring clean. That equates to a lot of waste generated on an annual basis.

The good news is people are still donating items, and the COVID-19 pandemic brought an uptick in donations at secondhand stores, those free-cycling and selling through local neighborhood apps, as well as those selling more valuable items on eBay, Nextdoor or Facebook Marketplace. The stay-at-home orders forced us to do something we have never done for extended periods: confront our living space and our propensity for embracing a “more is better” sensibility of material ownership.

As we return to life as normal, will we go back to our old ways? Will the cycle of purchasing and purging continue? As someone who has failed and restarted the minimalist lifestyle more than once, I think the answer is unfortunately, yes. Unless we are constantly forced to evaluate ourselves, we will be cleaning in spring and buying in summer, all the while wondering why we don’t have more space for our stuff.

The state of Maine made headlines July 12 when Gov. Janet Mills signed L.D. 1541 into law. The passage of the bipartisan bill made Maine the first state in the nation to adopt extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws that will require producers of packaged goods sold in the state to finance the maintenance and expansion of its municipal recycling programs.

Under the new law, Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection will select and contract with a stewardship organization to operate a packaging stewardship program that will reimburse and assist municipalities in providing recycling services throughout the state. Brand owners selling packaged goods must pay fees on all packaging materials to the stewardship organization to fund the system based on the costs of recycling for each material, including infrastructure investments or resident education needed to capture materials statewide. The fee structure, to be determined by DEP rule with stakeholder input, will also include financial incentives for recyclable packaging.

The measure is billed as a way to take the financial burden for packaging recycling off taxpayers and place it on the shoulders of the companies producing these materials, while simultaneously, help protect the environment by ensuring there is an outlet for these materials.

While EPR legislation in the U.S. is nothing new, it is most often associated with specialty product categories such as large appliances, carpet, mattresses, paint and pharmaceuticals. The pervasive nature of packaging in our waste stream makes Maine’s recent legislation all the more significant, as it signals a potential sea change in how recycling infrastructure might be managed throughout the country in the not-so-distant future.

At the time of this writing, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has a similar piece of legislation on her desk waiting to be signed, which most industry experts believe is imminent. In total, 10 states have packaging EPR bills being debated this year.

Additionally, a number of leading companies responsible for producing packaging have come out in favor of such legislation. Corporations such as The Coca-Cola Co., Walmart and Mars Inc. joined a network of 100 other global businesses in endorsing a recent letter from the U.K.-based nonprofit Ellen MacArthur Foundation that advocated for EPR laws for the packaging industry.

“We support this statement on the important role that well-designed EPR systems can play in keeping packaging material out of the environment and in the circular economy. Good EPR schemes can motivate businesses and help us achieve our circular economy targets,” Michael Goltzman, vice president of global policy and sustainability at The Coca-Cola Co., said in a statement.

How the adoption of packaging EPR legislation might unfurl across the U.S., or how long it might take, is anyone’s guess, but the fact that both state governments and major corporations are behind such measures indicates that how we tackle packaging waste as a country could soon look very different.