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The Silver Spring, Maryland-based Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) has announced several facility tours it will offer as part of its 2023 Sustainability Operations Action Resources (SOAR) event in Atlanta on April 17-20.
SWANA is offering six tour options within the scope of the event, with destinations including a chemical recycling plant, landfills, a composting facility and a soft drink bottling plant.
The chemical recycling facility visit is to Atlanta-based Nexus Circular. That firm, which says its technology allows it to convert discarded plastics into virgin-quality plastic, has been signing supply agreements to create demand for its end products.
SOAR attendees interested in composting can visit the CompostNow feedstock hub in East Point, Georgia, near Atlanta—a 10,000-square-foot warehouse that “serves as the launching point for all of CompostNow’s collection routes, container washing, and some distribution of finished compost and compostable packaging," SWANA says.
PET plastic beverage bottles will be one focus of attention during a tour of the College Park, Georgia, production center of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. United. The facility houses four manufacturing lines producing 70-plus flavors of carbonated soft drinks in recyclable PET bottles and aluminum cans.
A tour of the Seminole Road Landfill in Dekalb County, Georgia, will include a landfill but also a renewable fuel facility, a green energy facility, a composting area, a recycling area and land where a new landfill cell is being constructed.
A closed landfill in Newton County, Georgia, is the focus of another tour. The landfill site was funded by FEMA as a hazard mitigation project and has used a ClosureTurf final cover system designed to prevent erosion issues and leachate seepage. A site walk “will give attendees a first-hand look while discussing both innovative design features and construction details of the project,” SWANA says.
Finally, a three-stop Waste Reduction and Reuse Tour will entail visits to the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) in Atlanta, the Lifecycle Building Center in Atlanta and the re:Loom textiles recycling facility in Scottdale, Georgia.
SWANA describes its SOAR event as a technical conference that “connects experts and problem-solvers in industry-changing conversations about complex challenges.”
Topics on the four-day program are tied to landfill, recycling program, composting and anaerobic digestion operations, among other aspects.
More information about the event, including the program and how to register, can be found here.