Industry News

Mergers & Acquisitions

Waste Today acquires MSW Management magazine

GIE Media Inc., Valley View, Ohio, the parent company of Recycling Today Media Group and publisher of Recycling Today, Waste Today and Construction & Demolition Recycling magazines, has acquired MSW Management from Endeavor Business Media LLC.

“We’re thrilled to make this acquisition,” says GIE Media President Christopher Foster. “It represents the ongoing expansion of our environmental services business and demonstrates our deep commitment to serving industry professionals and suppliers across this marketplace.”

MSW Management was founded in 1991 by Forrester Media and has a rich heritage serving the solid waste management industry.

“We will integrate MSW Management into the Waste Today brand going forward,” says Jim Keefe, GIE Media executive vice president and Recycling Today Media Group publisher. “Historically, its strength was covering the technical aspects of landfill development and management. We intend to honor that history and look forward to enhancing our coverage accordingly.”

Keefe continues, “We have strategically expanded our coverage of the environmental services industry, which began in 1984 when GIE Media acquired Recycling Today. This acquisition expands the depth and breadth of GIE’s commitment to this important industry. Our print and digital brands have become the clear market leaders in the sectors we serve, while our events are industry staples that managers, executives and suppliers rely upon. We’re excited to continue our expansion.”

The Recycling Today Media Group is the leading media outlet serving the environmental services industry. With roots dating back to 1963, the group publishes Recycling Today, Waste Today and Construction & Demolition Recycling in print and digital formats as well as a portfolio of reader-engaged e-newsletters.

The group also produces the Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference, the Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference Europe, the MRF Operations Forum, Scrap Expo, the Battery and Critical Metals Recycling Conference, and Waste Today’s Corporate Growth Conference.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Waste Connections acquires Arrowhead Environmental Partners

Clairvest Group Inc. (CVG) has announced that it, a partnership managed by it, Clairvest Equity Partners VI, and the equity holders of Arrowhead Environmental Partners have sold their interests in Arrowhead to Waste Connections Inc., The Woodlands, Texas.

Arrowhead is a Perry County, Alabama-based nonhazardous solid waste management firm that provides waste-by-rail disposal services to several major U.S. markets facing tightening disposal capacity.

In June 2020, Clairvest invested in Arrowhead and partnered with three waste management executives—William Gay, James Francesco and Robert Berns—to help grow and build the company into a valuable enterprise, providing a solution for disposal-constrained markets. Over the three-year investment period, Arrowhead invested heavily in its transportation and disposal infrastructure, increased revenue by approximately 15 times and became a significant waste management industry player, Clairvest says.

Upon closing, CVG’s portion of sale proceeds was approximately $36 million.

“Our vision was to capitalize on the macro trends of declining disposal capacity and rising transportation and disposal costs in the Northeast and create a novel disposal solution for customers in the region, which we have successfully accomplished. The Clairvest team provided active support to our management team and was a valuable sounding board when evaluating strategic decisions. We sincerely appreciate their support over the past few years,” says Gay, who is co-founder and CEO of Arrowhead.

Vedder Price, Chicago, acted as legal advisor to Arrowhead.

Conversion Technology

Montauk Renewables lines up North Carolina offtake agreement

Pittsburgh-based Montauk Renewables Inc. has signed an offtake and renewable energy certificate agreement with North Carolina utility Duke Energy, lining up an end market for energy produced at the Montauk Turkey Creek facility in Sampson County, North Carolina.

Montauk is constructing the Turkey Creek facility to convert pork agricultural byproducts and waste into electricity, renewable natural gas (RNG) and other commodities, such as biochar fertilizer.

“The patented technology, as we believe, is designed in a manner that avoids meaningful amounts of greenhouse gas emissions,” Montauk says. “The 15-year agreement calls for Duke to buy the electricity as well as the associated swine waste renewable energy certificates (RECs) from the conversion, which is contracted to be up to 47,000 RECs per year once the facility is fully commissioned.” 

“We’re excited about the opportunity to work with Duke on our groundbreaking swine waste-to-renewable energy project and to serve the communities of eastern North Carolina with a project expected to be beneficial to the people locally and the environment globally,” Montauk CEO Sean McClain says.

Once fully commissioned, the facility, which can be expanded in the future, will have the potential to generate renewable energy sufficient to power more than 5,000 homes and businesses and will help Duke Energy meet its swine waste requirement under a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard law in North Carolina. Montauk says it anticipates the Turkey Creek facility being fully operational in the first half of 2025.

Montauk Renewables is a renewable energy company specializing in capturing methane and converting it into either RNG or electricity. The company has operations at 15 sites in California, Idaho, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Texas.

Organics

Texas university teams up with local composter to divert food waste

Baylor University in Texas has partnered with Houston-based Moonshot Compost to help divert food waste from the near-capacity Waco Landfill.

Moonshot Compost drops off collection bins to its subscribers, such as Baylor. The company will then take the bins to local compost facilities, where the food waste is combined with other materials to create compost.

Smith Getterman, director of sustainability and special projects at Baylor, tells news station KWTX the university has been trying to find affordable ways to compost its food waste for a decade or more. Kevin Merritt, food service director for Baylor Dining, adds that Baylor hopes to reduce the amount of food being sent to landfills.

“The actual process of composting has gotten cheaper ... over the years,” Merritt says. “When we first started this, initial estimates were substantially less than what they were several years ago, so we decided now would be a good time to try.”

Baylor subscribed to Moonshot for its Penland Dining Hall in April.

“We have more people coming through Penland Dining Hall than any other on campus,” Getterman says. “It really just seemed like a no-brainer to start here because it would really give us the best idea of how this would work.”

Students can place their plates on a revolving dishwasher that is sent to the back kitchen. Employees then discard food into a processor where it is converted into smaller pieces, then dumped into the bin.

Moonshot picks up the bin and takes it to a compost facility in Austin, Texas, where it combines food waste with yard waste and other components. After three months to a year, the materials are transformed into nutrient-rich soil used to grow crops and produce.

Moonshot collects data on how much food waste is diverted from landfills and sent to compost facilities. Since April, Moonshot’s online dashboard reports that Penland Dining Hall has diverted more than 28,000 pounds of food from going to Waco’s landfill.

“Just a couple of months later, we’ve already composted a little over 12 tons,” Getterman tells KWTX. “So, the answer is, yes, it does work.”

Baylor now has plans to expand its subscription with Moonshot Compost to include two more dining halls on campus.

“Expanding it across campus to be able to divert even more from the landfill is a good thing not only for Baylor but for McLennan County and the state,” Merritt says.

Waco’s landfill has been a concern for the city as it is predicted to reach capacity in July 2025, according to KWTX. The city of Waco has plans in the works to build a new landfill in Axtell, about 15 miles northeast of Waco.

Textiles

Group calls for EPA to include textiles in plastic waste efforts

American Circular Textiles (ACT), a New York City-based coalition of organizations working to drive circularity in the U.S. fashion sector, submitted a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) July 31 urging it to include textiles in its efforts to prevent plastic pollution.

The letter, submitted by Rachel Kibbe, executive director of ACT, during the comment period for EPA’s draft National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution, outlines the pressing challenges of textile waste and proposes solutions to combat the environmental and social impacts caused by the textiles industry.

The letter commends the EPA’s efforts to address plastic and other waste in waterways and oceans but emphasizes the significant impact of textile waste on environmental health, human well-being and climate change. With approximately 60 percent of clothing production materials consisting of plastic, including polyester, acrylic and nylon textiles, the ATC says the disposal of more than 30 billion pounds of textile waste annually in landfills and incinerators is becoming the nation’s fastest-growing waste stream, a major methane emitter and an outsized source of microfiber pollution. 

In its letter, ACT proposed amendments to existing extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws to include reusing and recycling textiles. The coalition suggests Congressional committees collaborate to pass bipartisan legislation providing a unified road map for state textile reuse and recycling solutions, including textile-specific EPR laws aligned with the waste hierarchy. This approach aims to harmonize national textile collection targets and the allocation of funds for textile reuse and recycling logistics, infrastructure, market development and innovation ACT says.

“We believe that by incorporating these recommendations into your strategy, we can make significant progress in reducing plastic waste and promoting circular fashion, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and equitable future,” Kibbe says.

Research

EPA funds Rice University team investigating PFAS destruction

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded $25,000 to Rice University to fund its research on treating per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) waste in landfills as part of the agency’s People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) program.

Rice is among 21 Phase I recipients that will receive grants of up to $25,000 each to help them develop their proofs-of-concept.Phase I recipients will be eligible to compete for a Phase II grant of up to $100,000 to further implement their designs.

“EPA’s P3 program, now in its 20th year, is an exciting and unique program that recognizes the power of students to translate imagination and science into new solutions that protect human health and the environment,” says Chris Frey, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The Rice University team is developing a chemical-free, ultraviolet unit that degrades PFAS in landfill leachate using boron nitride (BN), a nontoxic chemical compound. By providing a nontoxic method to treat PFAS-containing wastewater emanating from landfills, the amount of PFAS and other organic pollutants can be reduced in the water supplies of nearby communities.

Recently published research by a Rice University group headed by Michael Wong, a professor of chemistry, civil and environmental engineering, materials science and nanoengineering, shows that commercially available BN photocatalytically degrades perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) using ultraviolet-C (UVC) light and is 10 times more effective than the benchmark photocatalyst titanium dioxide on a per-photon basis. 

The UVC/BN system also was able to degrade other PFAS, including short-chain perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). The research group has extended its investigations to other BN-based materials, and its latest data indicate its best BN material shortens PFOA half-life to six minutes at room temperature. PFOA was undetectable after 40 minutes.

The undergraduate team will design and construct a bench-scale UV/BN photocatalytic batch reactor. Using PFOA and PFOS as model PFAS in synthetic landfill leachate with variable humic acid content, pH and total organic carbon, the team will conduct tests to ascertain performance information and appropriate operational conditions. PFAS concentrations will be measured to confirm degradation.

Facilities

Balcones plans $60M MRF in northern Texas

The City Council of McKinney, Texas, approved an ordinance on Aug. 15 awarding Balcones Resources the city’s 15-year municipal recycling contract. Balcones, Austin, Texas, will build and operate a 120,000-square-foot, $60 million material recovery facility (MRF) serving McKinney and surrounding north Texas communities.

The recycling campus will combine the latest innovations in recycling technology with employee wellness and community engagement programs, according to the company.

“This project is over a decade in the making,” Balcones President Adam Vehik says. “We’ve had operations in the area since the early ’90s and are excited for the significant environmental and economic impact this state-of-the-art facility will bring to the north Texas community.”

The facility will open its doors in spring 2026.

Balcones says the new facility is custom engineered to exceed McKinney’s diversion goals and will prioritize recovery rates higher than 95 percent, employee safety and quality control. All recycled commodities will be marketed in North America, prioritizing Texas-based companies, the company adds.

“This recycling campus represents Balcones’ vision for material recovery,” Vehik says. “As a recycling-only company, we focus on achieving the highest recovery rates growth, and we design systems that remain flexible to adapt in the future as the recycling landscape changes.”

Balcones will create approximately 53 new full-time environmental jobs to operate the facility. On-site resources will include energy conservation design, including solar panels and passive lighting, as well as native landscaping, electric charging stations and drop-off options for recyclable materials outside of the city program.

The facility also will feature advanced sortation technology, Balcones says.

Balcones has had a municipal recycling contract with the city of Austin since 2012 and is set to open a new facility in San Antonio in 2024. The north Texas facility will be the company’s ninth MRF and the fifth in Texas.