Grants to improve UBC capture rate at 2 MRFs

Material recovery facilities (MRFs) in Alabama and California have installed equipment that enables them to capture an estimated 31 million aluminum beverage cans annually for recycling that otherwise would have been missorted or sent to landfill thanks to grants funded by Ardagh Metal Packaging (AMP) and Crown Holdings (Crown).

Baldwin County, Alabama, has received a can-capture grant to finance the installation of an eddy current separator at a new MRF that serves 20,000 households. This installation prevents missorting by ensuring a best-in-class design for capturing aluminum beverage cans and will result in 516,000 pounds (17.9 million individual cans) of new aluminum being captured per year, according to a news release from the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI), Washington. This MRF also will receive a grant from The Recycling Partnership for equipment to sort polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, and polypropylene, or PP, as well as another grant from the Partnership to improve access to recycling collection throughout Baldwin County.

The Cal-Waste Recovery Systems MRF in Galt, California, has received a can capture grant to embed AI, or artificial intelligence, and new recognition technology into sorting equipment to increase can capture. This upgrade will result in 388,000 pounds (13.5 million individual cans) of new aluminum to be captured per year. This MRF, which serves 243,000 households, also is receiving a grant from The Recycling Partnership’s PET Recycling Coalition.

These two can-capture grants are the seventh and eighth grants that AMP and Crown have financed through the CMI’s MRF can-capture program. The Recycling Partnership, also based in Washington, has administered all eight grants. Collectively, these investments have funded equipment that will capture nearly 150 million aluminum beverage cans annually.

Based on its research and testing, CMI found that up to 1 in 4 aluminum beverage cans are missorted at a typical MRF. Without the revenue from used beverage cans, most of these facilities would not be able to operate without a change in their business model, the organization adds.

“The best way, in the immediate term, to collect millions of additional cans for recycling is through capturing missorted cans at material recovery facilities,” says John Rost, senior vice president of Crown Technology, Global Sustainability & Regulatory Affairs, Crown Holdings. “Crown is pleased to help finance equipment that quickly delivers so much more recycled aluminum. We can then utilize that material to build on our industry’s 71 percent average recycled content in aluminum beverage cans.”

The impact of these millions of cans recycled each year is enormous, CMI says. According to the organization’s can recycling impact calculator, the more than 30 million aluminum beverage cans recycled each year from the two most recent grants will generate more than $500,000 in revenue and avoid the CO2 equivalent emissions of driving more than 7.6 million miles. Further, with the nearly 150 million aluminum beverage cans recycled annually from all the grants to date, the impact represents approximately $2.3 million in revenue and energy savings equivalent to powering more than 6,000 U.S. homes for an entire year.

“Missorted cans are a missed opportunity to drive additional revenue for the U.S. recycling system, strengthen the domestic circular economy, and deliver carbon savings,” says Jens Irion, CEO, AMP-North America. “Ardagh Metal Packaging is proud to do its part to ensure more aluminum beverage cans are properly recycled.”

Adam Gendell, director of materials advancement with The Recycling Partnership, says, “The Recycling Partnership continues to support communities like Baldwin County, Alabama, and Galt, California, by mobilizing voluntary investments that modernize facilities and improve residential recycling programs. Our can-capture grants consistently deliver millions of used aluminum beverage cans and improve recycling for millions of people.”

CMI also has financed the installation of robots using a revenue-share model. In September 2023, AMP and Crown fully financed a two-year lease of an EverestLabs robot in Fresno, California, followed by another EverestLabs robot in May 2024 in Chicago.

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“The can capture equipment grant and revenue share financing program is a key part of CMI’s effort to reach its ambitious U.S. aluminum beverage can recycling rate targets,” says Scott Breen, senior vice president of sustainability at CMI. “Thanks to funding from Ardagh Metal Packaging and Crown Holdings, now, millions of additional cans will be recycled. These cans are likely to quickly become new cans considering 97 percent of recycled aluminum beverage cans in the United States become new cans and on average aluminum beverage cans go from recycling bin to newly formed can in less than 60 days.”