Avient debuts additives, service to increase recycling capabilities – Recycling Today

The company’s PCR Color Prediction Service will improve the ability to use PCR in packaging materials.Avient Corp., a provider of specialized and sustainable material solutions and services based in the Netherlands, has released its postconsumer recycled (PCR) Color Prediction Service for polyolefins and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resins as well as its new polyolefin antioxidants, Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling. According to a news release from Avient, these solutions are designed to improve the customer experience of working with PCR content for materials used in packaging. “Avient is fully committed to increasing opportunities to expand the use of recycled polymers, addressing any barriers that arise either during the recycling process or when customers want to incorporate PCR content into existing or new applications,” says Norbert Merklein, vice president and general manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions of Color, Additives and Inks at Avient. “Our Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling, together with the PCR Color Prediction Service, help overcome these roadblocks.” Avient says its PCR Color Prediction Service will help brand owners to understand what colors are achievable based on the amount of PCR used. Through a prior color matching, the service uses technology to determine if colors are feasible in a new application that incorporates PCR content. The solution also calculates how much PCR content can be added to an existing application without affecting its signature color. The company says it uses proprietary software to measure resin characteristics to identify the colors that can be successfully reproduced in a specific PCR-based material. Avient says the service “simplifies and accelerates the selection of preferred colors for polymers with PCR content.” In addition, Avient says its new Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling were designed based on formulation that protects postconsumer polyolefins against oxidation, which can lead to defects such as black spots, gels and discoloration. Avient says antioxidant can be added to PCR content early in the recycling process or incorporated in virgin resin to prepare it for future recycling. According to Avient, Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling use a let-down ratio that is half of what is required for standard antioxidants. Applications for polyolefins stabilized with this additive include packaging, automotive parts and consumer goods.
Avient Corp., a provider of specialized and sustainable material solutions and services based in the Netherlands, has released its postconsumer recycled (PCR) Color Prediction Service for polyolefins and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resins as well as its new polyolefin antioxidants, Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling.
According to a news release from Avient, these solutions are designed to improve the customer experience of working with PCR content for materials used in packaging.
“Avient is fully committed to increasing opportunities to expand the use of recycled polymers, addressing any barriers that arise either during the recycling process or when customers want to incorporate PCR content into existing or new applications,” says Norbert Merklein, vice president and general manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions of Color, Additives and Inks at Avient. “Our Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling, together with the PCR Color Prediction Service, help overcome these roadblocks.”
Avient says its PCR Color Prediction Service will help brand owners to understand what colors are achievable based on the amount of PCR used. Through a prior color matching, the service uses technology to determine if colors are feasible in a new application that incorporates PCR content. The solution also calculates how much PCR content can be added to an existing application without affecting its signature color. The company says it uses proprietary software to measure resin characteristics to identify the colors that can be successfully reproduced in a specific PCR-based material. Avient says the service “simplifies and accelerates the selection of preferred colors for polymers with PCR content.”
In addition, Avient says its new Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling were designed based on formulation that protects postconsumer polyolefins against oxidation, which can lead to defects such as black spots, gels and discoloration. Avient says antioxidant can be added to PCR content early in the recycling process or incorporated in virgin resin to prepare it for future recycling.
According to Avient, Cesa Nox A4R Additives for Recycling use a let-down ratio that is half of what is required for standard antioxidants. Applications for polyolefins stabilized with this additive include packaging, automotive parts and consumer goods.
The Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act of 2022 and the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act have been sent to the House for consideration.
S.B. 3742, The Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act of 2022, and S.B. 3743, the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act, passed the U.S. Senate by a unanimous vote July 28. The bills have been sent to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act of 2022, introduced by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish a pilot grant program for improving recycling accessibility in communities. The EPA would be able to award grants to states, local governments, Indian tribes or public-private partnerships if the bill becomes law.
The Composting Accountability Act, introduced by Sen. Tom Carper, establishes data collection and reporting requirements for recycling and composting programs, including the EPA reporting on the capability of implementing a national composting strategy to reduce contamination rates for recycling.
The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, says it has been working with the staff of Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee Chairman Carper and ranking member Capito on these bills to improve rural recycling accessibility and recycling/composting data collection long before their introduction.
“We thank Senate leadership for bringing these bills up under unanimous consent and urge the House of Representatives to move swiftly to pass these bills on suspension as well,” NWRA President and CEO Darrell Smith says in a news release following Senate passage of the bills. “We congratulate Sens. Carper and Capito and thank them for involving NWRA in an integral way throughout this process to pass this legislation that will advance America’s domestic recycling infrastructure and capabilities.”
Then-NWRA Chairman Ben Harvey of E.L. Harvey & Sons testified Feb. 2 before the EPW Committee at its hearing to examine improving domestic recycling and composting programs, particularly in rural areas. NWRA says it met with and provided assistance to EPW Committee staff as these bills were being drafted and offered its full-throated support for the bills upon their introduction in early March.
In June, Reps. David McKinley and Mikie Sherrill introduced the Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act (H.R. 8183) in the House, while the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act (H.R. 8059) was introduced by Reps. Joe Neguse, Tim Burchett and Bill Foster. NWRA submitted a letter to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change in June supporting House passage of these bills.
Also voicing support for the Senate’s passage of these bills is the Plastics Industry Association, Washington.
“Both of these pieces of legislation highlight much-needed improvements to the recycling system in the United States,” says Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the association in a news release.  “Better data and better infrastructure are key to the implementation of successful recycling. More accurate data will tell us exactly where recycling system deficiencies are, and improved infrastructure will aid in more efficient collection, sorting and recycling of all materials.”
Seaholm testified June 30 before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change as to the plastics industry’s significant investment in modernization and expansion of technologies to facilitate more effective recycling of materials, more readily available and efficient recovery facilities and the necessary capabilities to keep up with advancements that have transpired in plastic products over the past twenty years. Seaholm’s testimony also urged Congress to improve recycling rates by promoting market-end development to maintain a demand for recycled materials and create national standards and definitions relating to recycling.
 “The Plastics Industry Association looks forward to working with the U.S. House of Representatives to ensure quick passage of these important measures in hopes that they can be signed into law by the President,” Seaholm adds.
Dasani uses 100-percent-rPET bottles, and Sprite ditches its green bottles.
Coca-Cola Co. brands Dasani and Sprite have made changes to their plastic packaging designed to support a circular economy.

Dasani is releasing bottles made from 100-percent-recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), excluding caps and labels, while Sprite is transitioning from green to clear plastic bottles. This change is intended to increase the material’s likelihood of being recycled into new beverage bottles, Coca-Cola, which is headquartered in Atlanta, says. 
Dasani bottles in the United States, including 20-ounce and 1.5-liter singles to 10-ounce and 12-ounce multipacks, will be packaged in 100-percent-recycled plastic beginning this summer. In Canada, all Dasani bottles will be made with rPET. The change supports Dasani’s pledge to remove the equivalent of 2 billion virgin plastic bottles from production by 2027 relative to 2021 levels and the company’s World Without Waste goal to use at least 50-percent-recycled material in its bottles and cans by 2030. Its goals under World Without Waste also include making all of its packaging recyclable by 2025 and having at least 25 percent of its beverages sold in refillable/returnable packaging by 2030.
Chris Vallette, senior vice president of technical innovation and stewardship at Coca-Cola, tells Recycling Today that Coca-Cola is committed to reducing its virgin plastic use by not only increasing its use of rPET but also by lightweighting its bottles.
He says the company’s “complicated distribution system” is why the entire portfolio of Dasani bottles has not yet made the transition to 100 percent rPET. The bottle sizes that have made the transition all are produced across the same facilities and have access to reliable supplies of rPET.
Vallette says the company’s manufacturing system and bottler are different in Canada and it was easier to make the transition to 100-percent-rPET bottles all at once in that country.
In February of last year, Coca-Cola announced the launch of 100-percent-rPET Dasani bottles and Coca-Cola 20-ounce bottles in New York, California and Texas. According to the company, that launch helped the Coca-Cola’s system to identify the best-quality sources of rPET and fine-tune production processes needed to make bottles using solely rPET. 
However, so the company can increase its use of rPET, the supply of this material must grow, Vallette says.
“We have got to improve collection and get the processors stood up to produce the output,” he says.
While designing a bottle made from rPET presented something of an “engineering challenge,” particularly for Coca-Cola’s sparkling beverages given their pressure, Vallette says, “getting the rPET in the right place and in adequate, secured supply,” is the bigger issue.
Improving rPET supply is part of the reason the company is transitioning Sprite to clear bottles. Starting Aug. 1, that brand is shifting its PET packaging from its signature green color to clear. While green PET is recyclable, Coca-Cola says the recycled material is more often converted into strapping, clothing and carpeting rather than new PET bottles.
“Taking colors out of bottles improves the quality of the recycled material,” says Julian Ochoa, CEO, R3CYCLE, a postindustrial and postconsumer PET reprocessing company headquartered in Waxhaw, North Carolina, that is working with Coca-Cola Consolidated of Charlotte, North Carolina, to enable bottle-to-bottle recycling across the company’s largest U.S. bottler’s 14 state-territory. “This transition will help increase availability of food-grade rPET. When recycled, clear PET Sprite bottles can be remade into bottles, helping drive a circular economy for plastic,” Ochoa adds.
“Sprite’s move to clear will help us introduce more 100-percent-rPET bottles like Dasani is launching and keep more bottles in the circular economy,” Vallette says.
Sprite’s packaging graphics will retain the brand’s recognizable green hue and include “Recycle Me” messaging.
Coca-Cola North America’s entire green plastic portfolio—including packaging for Fresca, Seagram’s and Mello Yello—will transition to clear PET in the coming months, the company says.
By using clear PET bottles, the company hopes to improve the supply of end-of-life PET bottles as long as consumers recycle these bottles when they are done with them.
Coca-Cola, along with Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo, through the American Beverage Association’s Every Bottle Back initiative, is investing to improve the collection of PET bottles. Every Bottle Back, in an effort to improve the quality and availability of recycled plastic in key regions of the country, is directing the equivalent of $400 million to The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners through a new $100 million industry fund that will be matched three-to-one by other grants and investors. The investments are being used to improve sorting, processing and collection in areas with the biggest infrastructure gaps to help increase the amount of recycled plastic available to be remade into beverage bottles, the ABA says. Among the communities awarded grants so far are Laurel, Maryland; Big Bear City, California; Dallas-Fort Worth; Gwinnett County, Georgia; Marquette County, Michigan; and Baltimore.
“As long as demand is there and supply is not, it will put continuous price pressure [on rPET],” Vallette says. “If we can get all of the bottles back, we can help our suppliers control their costs better, and that ultimately helps us.”
As part of its plan to use more rPET, Vallette says Coca-Cola is setting up long-term relationships with rPET suppliers, working to understand their processing capabilities and collaborating to improve efficiencies rather than relying on spot market purchases of material.  
Dasani’s transition to 100-percent-rPET for the body of its bottles is projected to save more than 20 million pounds of new plastic compared with 2019 levels and to cut more than 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 alone, Coca-Cola says.
Coca-Cola says it is working to drive consumer awareness through the use of on-pack messaging that reads “100% Recycled Bottle” and “Recycle Me Again” as well as using calls to action on retail signage and other communications.
“We saw how much the 100-percent-recycled PET message truly resonates with our customers and consumers, particularly Dasani fans whose sustainability expectations are especially high,” Vallette says. 
At least one nongovernmental organization has greeted Coca-Cola’s recent announcement regarding its transition to a clear Sprite bottle as “greenwashing.”
Washington-based Greenpeace USA Plastics Project Lead Kate Melges released a statement that reads: “Just because a plastic bottle is recyclable does not mean that it gets recycled. Coca-Cola’s recent announcement is yet another blatant greenwashing attempt from one of the world’s worst plastic polluters. It is estimated that of all the plastic waste ever produced up to 2015, only 9 percent was recycled. We are in the midst of a massive plastic pollution crisis, and we cannot recycle our way out of it. In 2021, Coca-Cola manufactured 125 billion single-use plastic bottles—13 billion more plastic bottles than the previous year. Instead of turning off its plastic tap, Coca-Cola is continuing to produce billions of throwaway bottles every year, impacting our health and harming our oceans, our climate and our communities. If Coca-Cola wants to be a real leader in the fight against the plastic and climate crises, it must be more ambitious and commit to 50 percent reuse and refill by 2030.”
In response to such criticism, Vallette says Coca-Cola has a “three-pronged approach” to reducing virgin plastics use: minimizing the amount of plastic needed to make structurally sound bottles, making 25 percent of its packaging reusable and working to improve recycling of the bottles that are placed into the market. “No one of those three will meet market and consumer needs,” he says. However, the combination of them will reduce plastic waste and lower greenhouse gas emissions, Vallette says.
Reusable options the company is exploring include glass and plastic returnable containers as well as allowing consumers to use their own containers.
The company says Arrow's reliability and emphasis on customer service have positioned it as the preeminent provider to its base of over 10,000 clients annually.
Carr’s Hill Capital Partners Management (CHP), a lower middle market private equity firm based in New Orleans, has announced its investment in Arrow Inc., a provider of roll-off container and waste hauling services for residential, commercial and industrial clients in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.   
CHP says Arrow’s reliability and emphasis on customer service have positioned it as the preeminent provider to its base of over 10,000 clients annually.  
“Arrow Waste is a market leader with tremendous potential,” says H. David de Laureal, managing partner of CHP.  
Following CHP’s investment, Justin Vetsch joined Arrow Waste as CEO. Vetsch brings more than 11 years of industry experience, most notably in senior roles at WM in markets including Kansas City and Omaha. Justin has played a pivotal role in expanding commercial relationships, entering new markets, and developing strategic partnerships throughout the waste industry. Rip Thomson, Arrow’s founder, will continue as an active advisor to the business  
“I was immediately impressed by Arrow’s longstanding customer relationships and reputation for high-quality service,” Vetsch says. “The vision and capital support of the CHP team created a compelling opportunity, and we’re already making significant progress expanding Arrow’s post collection capacity and growing our commercial waste client base. I look forward to continuing to build a best-in-class, client-focused environmental services firm.”  
Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel for CHP; Hancock Whitney and Tecum Capital provided financing for the transaction. 
Waste and recycling firm sees its second quarter net income rise 51 percent year on year.
Casella Waste Systems Inc., based in Rutland, Vermont, has reported second-quarter revenue that rose by 31.4 percent compared with the second quarter of 2021 and net income that rose by 51 percent from a year earlier.
“We had a strong quarter, as our mature operating efficiency and pricing programs helped us to offset the impact of historically high inflation,” says John W. Casella, CEO and board chair. “Our core business is performing very well and driving growth, while our execution against our acquisition strategy has resulted in incremental growth.”
The CEO says in the 12 months ending June 30, 2022, for the first time in the company’s history it exceeded $1.0 billion in annual revenue. John Casella says, “This is a true milestone for the company. I am proud of our continued execution and believe we have the right people and processes in place to continue delivering strong results over the remainder of the year.”
The company also has been busy in the acquisition market, the CEO says. “We continue to grow the business meaningfully through acquisitions. Year to date, we have closed on 11 strategic acquisitions with annualized revenue of approximately $47 million and continue to have a robust pipeline of opportunities. We remain disciplined in our approach and have the potential to close on additional deals this fiscal year.”
Regarding retaining profitability, John Casella says, “As we expected, our fuel cost recovery fees effectively helped to offset the impact of rising fuel costs in the quarter, while resulting in limited margin compression. Further, our nimble efforts to adjust our pricing programs early in the year resulted in a 7.7 percent increase in collection pricing and a 6.9 percent increase in solid waste pricing in the second quarter.”
Looking ahead, John Casella says, “Given our strong operating execution year-to-date and the expected positive contribution of acquisitions completed this year, we are updating fiscal year 2022 guidance ranges for the second time this year.”
He continues, “These guidance ranges assume a stable economic environment through the remainder of the year, including the current historically high inflationary environment. We expect our pricing, fuel cost recovery fees, and operating efficiency programs to allow us to outpace higher costs and drive margin expansion year over year.”
Breaking down its second quarter revenue stream, Casella Waste says growth was mainly driven by: the roll-over impact from acquisitions along with newly closed acquisitions; positive collection and disposal pricing; higher solid waste fuel cost recovery fees; higher solid waste volumes; higher recycled commodity prices; and higher pricing, fees and volumes within its Resource Solutions (waste audit and diversion guidance) operating segment.

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