Jesse Murphy, former division manager of Waste Pro’s New Orleans office, has been promoted to divisional vice president, according to a release from the company. Murphy will manage all of the Longwood, Florida-based company’s Louisiana operations, which include New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Houma.
Murphy joined Waste Pro in 2015 as division manager in New Orleans. In that role, he was responsible for supervising more than 30 employees who operated 28 trucks servicing thousands of customers in the greater New Orleans area.
“Every day in this industry brings something new, so I’m excited to see where this will take me,” Murphy says. “This is an ever-changing industry, and I see that has endless opportunity. So, I’m ready to keep focusing on the goals and be open-minded to whatever is next.”
SWEEP releases ballot draft of its Municipal Standard
A National Consensus Committee meeting is scheduled for April 30 at the Los Angeles Environmental Learning Center.
SWEEP (Solid Waste Environmental Excellence Protocol), the sustainable performance standard covering municipal solid waste programs and the private companies that support them, has posted the ballot draft of its new Municipal Standard. Rob Watson, chief sustainability officer of New York City-based EcoHub and the founder of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification program, founded SWEEP. Its steering committee includes representatives from the Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA), Epsom, New Hampshire; Waste Management, Houston; the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, Charlottesville, Virginia; and BlueGreen Alliance, Minneapolis.
As a National Consensus Leadership standard, SWEEP will identify municipal and private sector leaders in the top 25 percent of sustainable materials management performance. The 100-point Municipal Standard consists of 50 credits spread across five Performance categories, plus a bonus Innovation category:
1. Sustainable Material Management Policy (SMMP), 21 points
one prerequisite
nine credits;
2. Waste Generation and Prevention (WGP), 18 points
5. Postcollection Disposal (PCD), 18 points, 10 credits; and
6. Innovation in Sustainable Materials Management, 10 bonus points.
A National Consensus Committee (NCC) will vote on the Municipal Standard over a 30-day period after incorporating the comments received during the first NCC meeting, which will be held April 30 at the Los Angeles Environmental Learning Center. Those interested can register at https://nrra.net/sweep/register-sign-up-for-national-consensus-meeting.
The NCC is comprised of more than 100 experts from municipalities and all facets of the industry from around the country. Participation in the NCC and at the National Consensus meeting is governed by the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS) industry trade association policy. MTS is an ANSI-Accredited standard-setting body that is conducting the National Consensus Standard process for SWEEP.
In collaboration with partners across globe, Earth Day Network, Washington, is building the largest nationally coordinated environmental cleanup in honor of Earth Day.
The Great Global Cleanup is a worldwide campaign to remove billions of pieces of trash from neighborhoods, beaches, rivers, lakes, trails and parks, reducing waste and plastic pollution, improving habitats and preventing harm to wildlife and humans.
The cleanup will take place in 13 cities across the U.S., with events planned April 27 in Anchorage, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington.
“The Great Global Cleanup will bring together millions of people around the globe to create the largest coordinated volunteer event in history,” says Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers.
Volunteers organized a coastal cleanup April 11 at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, as part of the global event. At the end of the session, bags of trash were weighed. Straws and plastic water bottles were the most commonly found items.
“Last year we had our most successful cleanup year yet, with over 2,500 pounds of trash collected,” volunteer coordinator Elizabeth Harnett says.
With approximately 25 locations in each city and more than 300 total cleanup events, the Earth Day 2019 cleanup aims to inspire volunteerism and achieve tangible impacts on waste in our environments, the organization says. The unified campaign includes mobile registration, digital mapping, social media, photo sharing, corporate volunteer engagement and data collection on cleanup results.
Building on best practices and verifiable metrics from 2019, the Great Global Cleanup will then be scaled up for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, with more than 100,000 events globally and one billion pieces of trash collected.
“We are excited to kick off in cities across the U.S. in 2019, and to expand globally in 2020 in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day,” Rogers says.
Federal government unveils food waste reduction plan
The USDA, EPA and FDA recently designated April as a food waste awareness month.
With food making up nearly 30-40 percent of the waste stream in the U.S., the agencies launched the Winning on Reducing Food Waste Initiative in October in attempt to reduce food loss and waste by 50 percent by 2030. The agencies agreed to coordinate food loss and waste actions that include education and outreach, research, community investments, voluntary programs, public-private partnerships, tool development, technical assistance, event participation and policy discussion on the impacts and importance of reducing food loss and waste.
The agencies developed the six-point strategy based on several sources, including:
EPA released the strategy April 9 to kick off the newly designated Winning on Reducing Food Waste Month. The agency says on its website that it will add to and build upon the framework of the strategy as related activities and projects are completed through 2020.
The agencies’ six priority areas, as outlined in the plan on EPA’s website, are:
Enhance interagency coordination. Improving interagency coordination will enable USDA, EPA and FDA to use government resources more efficiently and effectively. An interagency, collaborative mechanism will be established to reduce programmatic redundancies and leverage complimentary activities.
Increase consumer education and outreach efforts. Households are a major source of food loss and waste in the United States. Most consumers are unaware of the consequences of food loss and waste. A coordinated consumer education campaign endorsed and/or supported by USDA, EPA and FDA in conjunction with public, private or non-profit partners has the potential to raise awareness, motivate consumers to take action and accelerate progress to reduce food loss and waste.
Improve coordination and guidance on food loss and waste measurement. Enhanced coordination and voluntary guidance regarding measurement of food loss and waste will reduce confusion and help establish clearer goals and strategies. Improved and coordinated methodologies can identify missed opportunities and better communicate progress.
Clarify and communicate information on food safety, food date labels and food donations. Confusion about food safety guidelines, date labels and food donation results in food loss and waste at retailers and in homes across the country. Establishing and communicating clearer, coordinated voluntary guidance on food date labels and liability protection around food donation could help increase food recovery and lead to reductions in food waste and food insecurity.
Collaborate with private industry to reduce food loss and waste across the supply chain. The food industry, including processors, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and food service establishments, has an important role in reducing food loss and waste. Showcasing and building partnerships through efforts such as the USDA/EPA U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions, as well as connecting stakeholders with food waste reduction technologies, will help stimulate further efforts throughout the food supply chain.
Encourage food waste reduction by federal agencies in their respective facilities. Federal facilities operate food service venues, including cafeterias and concessions, and manage events. Encouraging the reduction of food loss and waste at these facilities and events will demonstrate federal leadership and implementation of the administration’s priorities.
How Montgomery, Alabama, is using routing software to transform its waste collection
The city of Montgomery, Alabama, overhauled its waste collection efforts through investment in new technology.
The proliferation of in-vehicle technology has given haulers a suite of capabilities the previous generation could only dream of. With advanced routing capabilities, instant data capture and driver behavior tracking, today’s route optimization software is becoming the norm in many fleets throughout the country.
Recognizing the benefits this software could have on increasing efficiency and promoting accountability, the city of Montgomery, Alabama, made the decision to outfit its fleet of 80 residential and commercial waste vehicles with Atlanta-based Rubicon Global’s RUBICONSmartCity technology this past June for a six-month trial run. Through smartphones loaded with the Rubicon hauler mobile app as well as plug-in devices that connect to the truck’s OBD II port, the technology presents an opportunity for the city to better service its 61,000 residences.
Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange says the city decided to invest in technology across its departments five years ago, but it wasn’t until Montgomery City Public Works Director Chris Conway met with Rubicon Global Director of Smart Cities Conor Riffle at the Municipal Waste Management Association’s U.S. Conference of Mayors in fall 2017 that the city got serious about investing in its waste operations.
“We had a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting where we decided we wanted to weave technology throughout all of our operations in the city that we could become a smart city, so to speak,” Strange says. “So, my managers and cabinet members started looking for ways that we could leverage technology, make our operations more efficient, more cost- effective and give better customer service. That was the motivation for us to look at Rubicon Global’s technology when the opportunity came around.”
Eyes and ears on the street
There are a lot of features users can access with fleet routing software. One of the major benefits of RUBICONSmartCity in particular, according to Rubicon SVP of Policy & Strategic Initiatives Michael Allegretti, is that it can serve as a type of roaming data center tracking issues throughout the city.
“We are always focused on building products that help our customers and our potential customers drive more value in their day-to-day operations, whether that’s operations of waste, recycling and diversion, or more broadly speaking, operations of an entire city,” Allegretti says. “RUBICONSmartCity is an exciting product because we look at city fleets, particularly waste service vehicles, as the eyes and ears of cities. These vehicles go down every street in every city at least once a week and can be used for tracking a myriad of issues.”
According to Conway, the software is easy for drivers to use, simply requiring the push of a button to document potential areas of concern that need addressed.
“This software can tell you if you have property maintenance issues, street maintenance issues, traffic maintenance issues—whatever those things might be, you’ve got a vehicle that’s out there driving every street in your city that’s able to give you real-time feedback that can be leveraged so you can respond in a more proactive manner,” Conway says.
Conway says that the software’s ability to easily capture data and pictures specific to waste-related issues was one of the main features that motivated the city to test Rubicon’s equipment. Through the dash-mounted smartphone, drivers were able to notify managers and supervisors of problems with improperly placed or missing carts, contamination and other issues, leaving a paper trail in the process that enforced accountability for both city workers and residents.
It’s this information that’s invaluable support for haulers when there are questions of culpability, Riffle says.
“After 6 months, Montgomery’s drivers have documented more than 25,000 times when they haven’t been able to service a location, and they’ve been able to document the reason why they haven’t served that location,” Riffle says. “That includes hundreds and hundreds of photos of things like bins not being out or bins being improperly filled or bins being blocked. And what this gives the city is the ability to provide feedback to the customer that says, ‘Hey, not only were we unable to service your bins, here’s the reason why.’”
Moving into the digital age
Beyond tracking issues out on the road, routing software gives drivers and fleet managers more modern and versatile tools for completing pickups. While haulers used to have to rely on dated maps and hardcopy documentation, RUBICONSmartCity tracks everything digitally.
“The smart device in the cab of the truck allows us to get away from the days of the paper clipboard where you hope the driver is able, willing or has the time to write stuff down while behind the wheel. The software also lets us know on a real-time basis where the driver is at any time during the day or how much of a percentage they have completed on a given route,” Conway says. “We used to have to rely on reams of old computer printouts. Now we’re in a digital age where we can track things instantaneously.”
One feature that the city of Montgomery didn’t choose to implement during its trial period with the software was its route mapping feature. However, Conway says that is the next logical extension for the city as it moves forward with the new technology in 2019. Beyond helping increase the speed and efficiency of the drivers’ routes, Conway says that he anticipates the smarter navigation capabilities will have a noticeable difference on the cost of collection.
“We really feel like there’s probably going to be a large opportunity to consolidate some routes and reduce the number of trucks that we need once we start using our routing software,” Conway says. “That is an opportunity to save some real dollars, not just from a fleet management standpoint, but from a purchasing standpoint.”
Going all in
Conway says the city made the decision to purchase the RUBICONSmartCity technology only a couple months into the trial period after seeing how seamlessly it was adopted. He says that after the first month of use, roughly 25 percent of drivers were using the system as intended. This number jumped to roughly 90 percent by the end of the six-month period thanks to an investment in training, as well as a willingness to learn.
“It’s a very user-friendly application. The main thing is you need buy-in from the top down and from the bottom up,” Conway says. “And we certainly had that with our organization. We’re all involved in this. Everybody knew that we were trying something new with this pilot, and we stressed to them that it was only going to be as useful as we made it. We had a tremendous buy-in from our employees.”
Conway says that by focusing on its benefits rather than using it as a “Big Brother” tool for reprimanding staff, the city has seen its waste collection efforts improve dramatically, setting the stage for greater adoption in the coming months.
Getting recognized
In recognition of the city’s ongoing efforts to use technology to improve how it serves its customers, Montgomery was selected as a Smart 50 Award winner in the Urban Operations category in January.
The Smart 50 Awards, presented by Smart Business magazine, recognize the 50 most transformative smart city projects across the world.
With a vision that was conjured up five years prior, the award was recognition of the city’s efforts to create a better life for its residents and municipal workers through investment in technical innovation.
“These awards … are a testament to our team’s dedication to embracing technology to pave the way for new opportunities and enhance overall quality of life in Montgomery,” Strange said upon winning the award. “Most importantly, these award-winning projects allow us to better serve our residents, ease the burden on staff resources and save taxpayer dollars. We are committed to finding even more innovative ways to build a brighter future and make Montgomery the best place to live, work and visit in our state and our region.”
Adam Redling is the editor for Waste Today and can be contacted at aredling@gie.net.
The new normal
Features - Operations Focus| Material Recovery Facilities
After opening its MRF in the wake of National Sword, the Monterey Regional Waste Management District is adapting to industry changes.
If you polled recyclers on the most inopportune time to open a new material recovery facility (MRF) over the last several decades, early 2018 would surely be high on the list.
China’s comprehensive recycling ban imposed by its National Sword policy was put into effect in January of last year, wiping out the lion’s share of domestic recyclers’ No. 1 market overnight. Stockpiling material and plummeting commodity prices ensued across the country.
Those were challenges the Monterey Regional Waste Management District (MRWMD) faced as it opened the doors to its newly renovated $24 million, 100,000-square-foot facility in February 2018 that was constructed to process single-stream recycling, construction and demolition (C&D) debris and mixed commercial waste. The MRF is part of MRWMD’s comprehensive waste management infrastructure that includes a landfill, a reuse store and composting and anaerobic digestion sites.
Dealing with the changes
According to Tim Brownell, the director of operations at Monterey Regional Waste Management District, it quickly became obvious that the changes in the market were going to have a profound effect on the MRF’s bottom line.
“There was sticker shock in a way when we opened in that the revenue we thought we would be getting from the facility was obviously less than anticipated,” Brownell says. “So, when we opened the facility, our business plan in terms of revenues and costs was turned upside down right off the bat.”
According to Brownell, the half-percent contamination thresholds imposed by the China ban required the facility to rethink its strategy for handling incoming material. To help improve purity rates, the facility brought in more manual sorting personnel to assist with the recycling efforts.
“We originally were thinking we would need roughly 16 sorters on the line to go with all the new separation equipment, but we really needed to bulk up the number of folks on our presort line,” Brownell says. “We also had to add additional folks on our post-sort line to really aggressively pull out nonrecyclable materials. So, our sorting staff estimate was that we’d need approximately 16 people on the line, and within two months of opening, we had 26 sorters on the line.”
Beyond the contamination thresholds that required unanticipated vigilance, Brownell says the facility was also being tasked with handling unforeseen volumes. The facility is on pace to process 60,000-65,000 tons of single-stream recycling a year—four times more than the 15,000 annual tons they expected when opening.
“National Sword has impacted everybody in that they’ve had to slow down their lines to try and meet those contamination requirements,” Brownell says. “Instead of a facility being able to run 40 tons an hour, they had to slow down to 30 tons an hour. It has decreased processing capacity across our area. Our facility opening up allowed recyclers a local option for offloading materials instead of them having to move their materials to the San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland Bay area.”
Although the China ban diminished the price of some materials and facilitated the need to hire more staff, Brownell says the increase in volume that the facility has been processing has allowed the MRWMD to meet its original revenue projections through new and familiar end markets.
The predominance of the fiber generated by MRWMD—mixed paper, office paper and corrugated—is still getting exported but very little is going to China. Brownell says the majority of these materials are now shipping to Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia. Conversely, Brownell says the majority of the plastics (separated PET, HDPE, clear and colored, and a No. 5 polypropylene grade) that are sorted on-site, as well as the metals generated at the plant, are shipped domestically. The exception is a mixed rigid plastics grade composed of mostly HDPE that is being shipped internationally, most recently to Taiwan.
Working smarter
The facility has both a C&D line and a single-stream line that also accommodates some mixed solid waste processing. On the C&D line, the MRF processes between 65,000 and 70,000 tons per year at a recovery rate slightly over 65 percent. On the single-stream and mixed solid waste line, they’re processing roughly 65,000 tons per year with a 70 percent recovery rate.
The recycling line features bag breaking and screen technology from Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon, that work together to filter incoming materials and present consistently sized fractions to the plant’s single-drum separators from Nihot, Amsterdam, which remove contamination from the fiber and container streams. A FiberPure optical sorter from National Recovery Technologies (NRT), Nashville, Tennessee, sorts either plastic film or paper, depending on the material stream and the operator’s discretion, and recovers various types of plastics as needed, based on their marketability. MRWMD bales recyclables with a PAAL Konti baler from Kadant, Westford, Massachusetts.
Brownell says that while the combination of new equipment and increased staffing has allowed the plant to better sort incoming materials, the stricter regulations facing the industry have also forced the plant to put a greater emphasis on training.
“There was one benefit, I think, to us opening when we opened,” Brownell says. “We opened probably at the worst point in terms of material value and restrictive quality standards, but we were forced to train our people to those standards. It wasn’t about doing what we did in the past—the market standards set a new precedent. Although the economic timing was awful, the reality that we’ve been able to train our staff to really understand that quality matters has been a tremendous benefit.”
An emphasis on education
Brownell says that in addition to training staff, residents and haulers in the community need to be part of the solution to help bring about a higher standard of quality in the post-China-ban age of recycling.
“I think the biggest learning challenge and the biggest adjustment that needs to be made is getting both the public and the hauling community familiar with the fact that it’s a new time,” Brownell says. “We really want the public to understand what is recyclable and what is not and that the economics of recycling are different now.”
To help educate those in the community about what can and can’t be recycled, MRWMD has launched a year-long awareness campaign to get messaging out via local newspapers and other publications. The district is also releasing an app, “What Goes Where,” to help the community understand what can be placed in the blue bin.
Brownell says haulers also need to recognize the changing economics of recycling. He says charging in accordance with these costs can help a program succeed.
“Where we are at now is the new normal for at least the next two to three years—potentially much longer than that,” Brownell says. “The amount of revenue generated from the sale of recycled materials may not cover the cost of processing in the ways that they did in the past. Having ratepayers, municipalities and independent haulers understand that change is one of the bigger challenges that we face.”
Brownell says the district is working with the haulers that deliver materials to the plant to establish tip and processing fees that recognize quality. This processing fee would be based, in part, upon contamination of incoming single-stream materials above 10 percent. For every percentage point above that, haulers would have to pay a little more.
“We’re trying to create financial incentives to the hauling community to bring us cleaner materials,” Brownell says.
Preparing for the future
Though MRWMD doesn’t have any plans for upgrades at this point, Brownell says he expects discussions over the next year on the merits of incorporating additional optical sorters to target film and flat plastics on the plant’s fiber streams and additional sizing screens to capture smaller grades of brown paper from its mixed paper line.
“These quality standards are becoming the industry standard,” Brownell says. “We have to ask ourselves what the additional investments are that we need to make to either reduce some of our labor costs or increase our quality.”
Brownell says that as the industry works to figure out how to best solve the challenges present in the recycling sector, MRWMD is primed to utilize its resources to find new, and better, solutions for diverting materials.
“What’s interesting about our community is that we have all these waste stream processing activities at one site,” he says. “Over time, it’s going to be fascinating to see what opportunities we have to improve the recycling program in ways that don’t impact the solid waste programs or the composting programs. I want to see how these changes in recycling we’ve seen over the last year impact the rest of the solid waste stream. ... We have a bit of a laboratory here, so it’s going to be an exciting place.”
This article originally ran in the March issue of Waste Today. The author is the editor for Waste Today magazine and can be contacted at aredling@gie.net.