Recycling company helps to reduce food waste in Kent County, Michigan

A local recycling company hopes to help Kent County, Michigan, achieve its goal of diverting 90 percent of the county’s trash from landfills by 2030, reports MiBiz.

Perfect Circle Recycling LLC, Grand Rapids, Michigan will be working directly with restaurants and grocers to reduce food and beverage waste. According to Perfect Circle’s COO Todd Wilson, its primary business will be product destruction and recycling food and beverage products that are still in packaging.

The company plans to partner with grocers, restaurants, breweries, schools and universities to help them reduce waste that otherwise would go to a landfill.

“Globally, diverting [waste] from landfills is where we need to go,” Wilson told MiBiz. “Landfills continue to fill and get buried and we want to be on the front edge of being able to recycle what we can. It benefits the health of the community and provides jobs.”

Perfect Circle signed a lease on its 20,000-square-foot facility in April, but machine delivery has been delayed due to COVID-19, Wilson said. The company has let Spectrum Health take over its building in the interim until its machine arrives.

Once the company is fully operational, it will provide businesses with 64-gallon carts to collect organic food and beverage waste, which will be collected and processed by Perfect Circle, Wilson said. Any packaging will be consolidated and recycled so it can be put back into circulation.

From there, Wilson said the company intends to take liquid waste from the process to an anaerobic digester in Fremont to create renewable energy. The traditional way of doing things is to take food and beverage waste to a landfill or incinerator, which produces noxious fumes, Wilson explained.

Perfect Circle will also have the ability to decant and properly dispose of beer that has spoiled, which some breweries faced during the stay-home order.

“There are many progressive restaurants and breweries that want to run their businesses sustainably and what’s perceived as eco-friendly to their community,” Wilson said. “We will help them do that.”