The New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) announced Aug. 4 that curbside composting, put on hold during the height of the pandemic, is being reinstituted for many city residents. Through participating in the program, DSNY says that New Yorkers can help keep their neighborhoods clean, reduce waste being sent to landfills, create compost for city parks, and produce clean renewable energy to heat homes.
While residents were automatically enrolled in the program previously, those interested in participating in the latest iteration of curbside composting collection will need to sign up online. The registration process will allow the DSNY to better understand who is most interested in participating in the program and tailor truck routes in the most efficient way possible, the department says.
Haulers overseeing the curbside composting program will collect food scraps, food-soiled paper products and yard waste from city residents in a brown bin provided by DSNY. DSNY will collect these materials every week and turn them into a resource via compost or renewable energy.
“We are very happy to have received the funding needed to help restart our curbside composting program,” New York City Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson says. “This waste makes up about a third of what we throw out, and to move towards a zero-waste city, we need to put this very valuable material to beneficial reuse.”
The program is open to occupants of residential buildings of all sizes. While the service will initially be available to the 3.5 million city residents who previously had service, DSNY is asking everyone interested in curbside composting to fill out an online registration form to help the department decide whether to expand this service to additional neighborhoods.
Service will resume on a rolling basis beginning in fall and will be based on the number of sign-ups in each neighborhood. This will help ensure steady participation and make for efficient use of vehicles, the city says. Residents who participated in the past may use the same DSNY-issued collection bin they already own; those needing a new brown bin will have an opportunity to receive one before service begins.
The curbside collection program began in 2013 and expanded to serve 3.5 million city residents before the program was put on hold due to COVID-19.
Residents who are not able to participate in the curbside program but who want to put their food scraps to reuse may visit one of the 142 food scrap drop-off sites offered throughout all five boroughs. Additional food scrap drop-off sites will be opened in the following months.
Casella announces retirement of chief accounting officer
Chris Heald
Casella Waste Systems Inc., Rutland, Vermont, a regional solid waste, recycling and resource management services company, has announced that the company’s Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Christopher B. Heald plans to retire March 31, 2022, after a 20-year career with the company.
“I would like to sincerely thank Chris for his exemplary service to the company and his strong contributions to our success throughout his tenure with the company,” says John W. Casella, chairman and CEO of Casella. “Chris has demonstrated the utmost integrity, a strong work ethic and a high level of service to our team throughout his exemplary career at the company.
“Through his steady leadership, he has helped to build the accounting and shared services teams and functions. While Chris will be greatly missed by the team, we wish him the best in his retirement, and we have great confidence in our accounting team to continue his legacy of excellence.”
Heald plans to stay on in an advisory capacity during a transition period.
GFL Environmental Inc., Ontario, Canada, announced Aug. 17 that it has closed the previously announced acquisition of the solid waste and environmental solutions business of Terrapure Environmental Ltd. and its subsidiaries. The acquisition excludes Terrapure’s battery recycling business.
On March 15, GFL announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the solid waste and environmental solutions business of Terrapure for an aggregate purchase price of $743.8 million.
Terrapure is an Ontario-based integrated provider of solid and liquid waste management and industrial services to more than 7,000 customers across Canada. Terrapure’s environmental and organics solutions cover a diverse range of waste streams from generation through collection, processing, recovery, recycling, reuse and disposal. These services are managed through the company’s integrated network of assets, including its landfill and its liquid and solid waste collection and processing facilities. Terrapure’s operations are supported by a fleet of more than 500 collection vehicles and approximately 1,600 employees.
Terrapure’s operations acquired in the acquisition generated revenue of approximately $292.7 million in 2020, inclusive of COVID-related volume impacts.
According to GFL, the acquisition advances the company’s growth strategy and aligns with the company’s goal of growing free cash flow.
During the initial announcement of the deal, GFL laid out three ways the acquisition will benefit the company:
It will enhance GFL’s capabilities and reach. According to the company, the acquisition brings a high-quality, complementary asset network and customer base to GFL's existing operations and augments GFL's existing service offerings in several regional markets, including Atlantic Canada. As part of the acquisition, GFL will acquire the Stoney Creek landfill, an industrial landfill strategically located in the greater Toronto area which recently received expansion approval for 14-plus years.
It will create significant synergies. According to the company, the acquisition creates an opportunity for GFL to realize meaningful synergies and earnings accretion. The company expects the acquisition to generate at least $36.1 million of adjusted free cash flow and at least $10 million in annual cost synergies through operational opportunities from geographical and functional overlap between the existing operations of Terrapure and GFL.
It will create long-term shareholder value. According to the company, the acquisition reinforces GFL's goal of creating long-term equity value for shareholders. Terrapure’s strategically located network of assets coupled with its strong operating margins are expected to be immediately accretive to free cash flow and provide opportunities for the company to continue to pursue its growth strategy.
“The acquisition of Terrapure is another example of GFL delivering on our commitment to pursue strategic and accretive acquisitions to continue growing our business,” Patrick Dovigi, founder and CEO of GFL, says. “Terrapure brings a high-quality, complementary network of assets and customer base to our existing solid and liquid waste operations and expands our service offerings in several regional markets. This strategically located network of assets and Terrapure’s strong operating margins are expected to be immediately accretive to free cash flow and provide opportunities for us to continue to pursue our growth strategy.”
“We are excited to welcome the over 1,600 Terrapure employees to the GFL family,” Dovigi concluded.
Clean Harbors acquires HydroChemPSC for $1.25B
Clean Harbors Inc., an industrial and environmental service provider based in Norwell, Massachusetts, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire HydroChemPSC (HPC) from an affiliate of Littlejohn & Co. for $1.25 billion in an all-cash transaction. HPC is a U.S. provider of industrial cleaning, specialty maintenance and utility services based in Deer Park, Texas.
According to a news release from Clean Harbors, the acquisition, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions, is expected to close in 2021.
“In a business where brand equity, customer service and reputation for safety are important, HPC is a recognized leader with terrific assets that will enhance our environmental services capabilities, particularly in the higher-value areas of specialty work and facility services,” says Alan S. McKim, chairman, president and CEO of Clean Harbors. “This acquisition highlights our disciplined approach to M&A, which is geared around accretive transactions that create multiple cross-selling opportunities and drive waste into our network.”
HPC says it expects to generate approximately $744 million in 2021, with full-year adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $115 million. Clean Harbors estimates it can achieve cost synergies of $40 million from the acquisition after the first full year of operations. This would equate to a purchase multiple of 8.1 times on a post-synergized basis. The company expects to fund the acquisition through a combination of available cash and the issuance of additional debt.
According to the company, Clean Harbors’ planned acquisition of HPC offers significant strategic benefits, including:
brings on a talented and experienced leadership team with a track record of growth;
increases the size, scale and capabilities of the industrial services and field services businesses;
drives incremental volumes of waste into Clean Harbors’ incinerators, landfills and other waste treatment facilities;
adds deep customer relationships, including more than 180 embedded locations;
improves the company’s industrial services safety profile through more automation and hands-free technologies;
generates considerable cross-selling opportunities, particularly in the disposal and emergency response sectors; and,
captures significant synergies in areas like customer service, transportation, branch network, asset rentals, vehicle and tank refurbishment, subcontracting and procurement.
HPC has more than 5,000 employees and operates in more than 240 locations. The company’s fleet consists of more than 5,600 units including vacuum trucks, roll-off trucks, high-pressure water blasters and light-duty vehicles. In addition, HPC says it is the only provider of industrial cleaning and specialty services with a dedicated manufacturing and technology center.
“One of the many reasons we were attracted to HPC is its differentiated technology, which provides safe, highly efficient and more profitable cleaning and specialty solutions,” McKim says. “HPC leads the industry when it comes to hands-free technologies and automation for industrial services. Part of our ESG efforts have been focused on ensuring the safety of our people and our customers. The acquisition of HPC is another important step in that direction.”
One of BETO’s goals is to push the minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) from $3 gasoline gallon equivalents (gge) to $2.50 gge by 2030. However, this goal will require significant cost reductions in delivered feedstock cost, and a driver of this goal is organics characterization in processing MSW.
BETO is pursuing the study of economically advantaged feedstocks (e.g., MSW, biosolids) beginning in 2022. This implies a need for sufficient quantities of these sources to be researched and studied, as well as the impacts of their intrinsic low quality and heterogeneity to be understood and mitigated.
The numbers best illustrate the need. There are 30 million tons of yard waste produced annually and 13 million tons destined for landfills, according to a 2015 assessment by the EPA. Significantly, there are now organics bans at state levels scheduled to take effect in the next few years, including California; however, adequate capacity is lacking to address such diversion mandates and many conversion technologies require real-time composition analysis to operate properly.
Given the high volumes available and the low costs of these materials, they represent an attractive option to meet BETO’s goals of developing technologies for producing cost-competitive advanced biofuels from non-food biomass resources. Advances in techniques to characterize MSW in real time with respect to content and contaminants are enabling innovation in recycling and environmental protection. The potential of MSW fractions as high-volume, low-cost feedstock to produce biofuels and bioproducts has been recognized but not fully implemented due to knowledge gaps, which include the following: What is the makeup of potential feedstock materials and contaminants in a waste material stream and how do these change with time and location? What is the feedstock potential of materials sampled from a waste material stream? How will feedstock materials with acceptable levels of contamination be separated from waste streams with cost levels and scale sufficient for development? What are techniques to conduct high throughput biofuel characterization determinations? What is the ability to analyze the streams to determine if the field metadata can predict the feedstock potential as a function of time and location?
These knowledge gaps exist not because of the lack of ability to execute the studies; rather, they can be attributed to the fact that the focus in waste characterizations is often limited by funding or deadlines, and narrowly scoped efforts in planning new waste handling operations.
Innovation in detection and sampling methods for the waste stream is one of the BETO study focus areas. MSW streams are complex, and manual separation and characterization are time-consuming and limit the ability to analyze the amount of each fraction of the waste stream and their associated chemical and physical properties. New application and standard imaging and spectrographic methods will enable identification of different components of each waste stream as well as contaminants such as glass and metals. New detection methods will also enable sampling that permits a more detailed quantitative characterization of the waste stream. The potential identification technologies include XRF spectroscopy, NIR cameras, 3D vision capabilities, and visible spectrum (RGB) cameras/sensors.
These technologies have been used to characterize MSW streams to a certain degree, but have not been combined to achieve higher flow rate, identification accuracy, and waste characterization. Additionally, artificial intelligence has application given its ability to collect large and diverse datasets on the waste material stream. AI can identify various components in the stream for a reasonable real-time characterization maximizing the greatest potential for captured data to drive machine-learning results, laying the groundwork for automated extraction of desired materials from the waste stream at an economically advantaged scale in which MSW is collected.
Doing the bulk of the work
Features - Bulk Collection
The city of Largo, Florida, has managed to efficiently collect bulk waste through timely scheduled pickups and the usage of Peterson trucks.
Bulk waste collection is a common challenge for haulers and municipalities due to both the elevated volume of waste needed to be collected and the cumbersome nature of the materials. However, advances in waste collection truck design have made it easier for waste workers to deal with these materials in a timely manner.
The city of Largo, Florida, offers commercial, residential and bulk solid waste collection for approximately 80,000 customers. In addition to its biweekly garbage and weekly recycling and yard waste pick-up, the city offers bulky waste pick-ups four times a year.
To handle its bulk waste, the city has been using Petersen grapple trucks since 1990. Over the years, the city has continually expanded its fleet. While the city originally operated two of the company’s flagship TL3 Lightning Loader trucks, it has since invested in three TL3 Route Assistant Grapple Loaders, along with two older models that are used as spare trucks when its other trucks are sidelined for maintenance or pick-up volumes dictate additional resources be used.
The main reason Largo Solid Waste invested in Petersen trucks was to prevent any further injuries among its employees, most of them caused by overexertion or muscle injuries. This was because prior to using Petersen grapple trucks, Largo relied on its workers to manually haul all its waste, even for bulk collection.
“All of our collection use to be manual,” Shauwn Clark, a Largo Solid Waste supervisor, says. “We were noticing … we were having a lot of worker’s comp injuries: A lot of back issues and arm issues from one or two people trying to lift up heavy stuff and throw it into a truck. We got those Petersen trucks to reduce the number of injuries that come with lifting heavy items.”
Picking Petersen
Petersen first began introducing trucks to the waste industry in 1957. While the Lightning Loader was the first model that gained traction in the industry, the company has continued to innovate in designing grapple loaders, transports and truck mounts. Some of the company’s current models include the TR3 Route Assistant Grapple Loader, the CP3 Container Transport and the SL3 Stationary Mount Grapple Loader.
Although there are competitors, Clark says the city has never deviated from Petersen vehicles since purchasing its first vehicle from them more than three decades ago. In fact, the city is willing to be an early adopter for the company’s newer technology, as was evidenced when the city became one of the first municipalities to include Petersen’s 2018 Route Assistant models in its lineup.
Thanks to the trucks’ intuitive design, Petersen trucks have become a staple in Largo’s lineup, making it easier to organize and carry out bulk pick-ups. The automated grapples, one of the main features of the trucks, serve to eliminate the need for drivers or helpers to physically deal with the waste, removing any situations where injury could be caused by physical labor or hauling.
The position of the grapple on the TL3 Route Assistant truck serves as a safety feature, as well, as the grapple’s side-mounted location, as opposed to a rear-mounted location, is less of an obstacle. This feature also allows manual haulers to move some of the material by hand into the machine while the grapple loads waste separately.
According to Casey Hardee, president and CEO of Petersen Industries, the TL3 Route Assistant is able to load material of virtually any size, including tricky materials like glass or bagged yard waste. The responsiveness of the grapple and its size are user friendly and make it easy for drivers to make short work of waste piles.
While injury prevention has been a notable benefit of investing in Petersen trucks, it is not the only advantage for the city. Since they’ve started using the Petersen grapple trucks, Clark notes that the route times have greatly improved and allowed the city to fine-tune its routing and expected duties of its drivers.
“When we converted to the new [Petersen] trucks, we rerouted all of our guys,” Clark says. “They serve about 600 to 900 houses per route, as opposed to what used to be like 1,400 to 1,600 [houses] per route. The drivers were more accountable for their routes because they don’t have the second truck coming through [to get what they missed, so] they are required to pick up everything on their route.”
The improved routing has also allowed drivers to finish their routes quicker so that they can assist on other routes when needed.
In addition to their current fleet of Petersen vehicles, Largo has four additional TL3 Route Assistant Lightning Loader trucks on order, with one arriving soon and the other three expected to be delivered in October 2022.
The author is an editorial intern for the Recycling Today Media Group.
