Unique Public-Private Partnership to Modernize Baltimore’s Recycling Collection and Infrastructure
June 23, 2021
Investment and collaboration will make recycling safer, more accessible, and bring the City of Baltimore closer to Zero Waste
(June 23, 2021) The City of Baltimore announced today a groundbreaking collaboration brought together by The Recycling Partnership, with American Beverage’s Every Bottle Back initiative, Closed Loop Partners, Dow Packing & Specialty Plastics, the Baltimore Civic Fund, and Rehrig Pacific that will greatly expand Baltimore residents’ access to safe, effective recycling and improved collection infrastructure.This innovative public-private partnership supports a $9.5 million project, consisting of a $3 million total investment from The Recycling Partnership, which includes $1.65 million from the beverage industry, a plastic resin donation for recycling carts from Dow Packing & Specialty Plastics, and lidded rollout carts manufactured by Rehrig Pacific, as well as a $3 million investment from Closed Loop Partners’ Infrastructure Fund. This first of its kind collaboration will help Baltimore provide free recycling carts to 190,000 households to collect and process more recyclable materials, including beverage bottles and cans. As part of the effort, the city will launch a recycling education campaign to inform the community about the new carts and what can and cannot be recycled.
The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners have estimated that providing Baltimore households with modern recycling carts has the potential to generate an estimated 40 million new pounds of all recyclables per year – an 80% increase of recyclables per household in Baltimore. The program will also help collect and recycle nearly 30 million new pounds of plastic over 10 years, including 16 million new pounds of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) that might otherwise have gone to waste.
“The collaboration with The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners is essential for fostering a recycling culture in Baltimore,” said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. “My administration is committed to implementing the City’s Less Waste, Better Baltimore Plan and building greener, healthier communities.”Baltimore is the eighth-largest city in the United States without universal cart recycling access, a key driver in the city launching an ambitious zero-waste goal.
“Delivering free recycling carts to Baltimore City households will simply be a gamechanger for our waste diversion plan,” said Baltimore City Department of Public Works Acting Director Jason W. Mitchell. “By diverting waste from landfills, we not only decrease the workload on our routine services crews, who have been stellar throughout the pandemic, but we also lay the foundation to build a more sustainable and cleaner Baltimore for generations to come.” Providing residents with a free recycling cart is one of the key recommendations in the city’s Less Waste, Better Baltimore Plan, which has identified options for improving solid waste diversion, recycling, and disposal in the city. Previously, Baltimore households who participated in the city’s weekly recycling collections had to provide their own carts.
“This is The Recycling Partnership’s single largest recycling grant to date, and I’m thrilled that it’s in Baltimore. Building a multi-million-dollar grant like this one takes time and trust. We see a skilled and dedicated staff ready to ensure that Baltimore’s new, free recycling program reaches community wide, serving the greater public with this key to protecting the environment.” said Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling Partnership. “The Baltimore public can take pride in knowing that they’re part of one of the most unique public-private partnerships to improve recycling. This hybrid of grant, investments, and donation of plastic resin to make the recycling carts themselves is the type of collaboration worthy of celebration.”
Launched in 2019 by American Beverage, Every Bottle Back is an unprecedented initiative to reduce the beverage industry’s plastic footprint by increasing the number of bottles that are collected and remade into new ones. Every Bottle Back brings together The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr. Pepper, and PepsiCo with leading environmental and sustainability organizations – World Wildlife Fund, Closed Loop Partners, and The Recycling Partnership – to support the circular plastics economy.
“Local beverage bottlers and beverage distributors share the goal of keeping plastic out of the environment and we welcome this collaboration between the city, businesses and sustainability groups to ensure recyclables are collected and remade into new products as intended,” said Ellen Valentino, executive vice president of the MD/DE/DC Beverage Association.A move to larger-capacity, lidded recycling carts enables safer and more efficient collection, reducing the amount of manual labor needed, helping to prevent injury to collection staff while providing residents with increased storage capacity for their recyclables at the same time.
“Strong, cross-sector collaboration is critical to building resilient local recycling infrastructure that effectively keeps valuable materials in play. We are proud to be a part of this unprecedented partnership with The Recycling Partnership, American Beverage, Dow, Rehrig Pacific and the City of Baltimore to catalyze social, environmental and economic impact on the ground,” said Ron Gonen, CEO of Closed Loop Partners. “There is power in the collective, and public-private partnerships have proven to be a key component of advancing the circular economy in the United States.”Since recycling carts are made from plastic resin, supplying these 205,000 recycling carts would not be possible without the generous donation of plastic resin from Dow Packing & Specialty Plastics or without the partnership with Rehrig Pacific.
“To build a true circular economy for plastic there must be a collaboration across a variety of companies and organizations,” said Diego Donoso, president, Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics. “The recent Paying It Forward report shows that 40% of Americans don’t have equitable recycling, and this project is a wonderful example of how collaborative solutions can accelerate closing that gap. I invite all industries to join forces with The Recycling Partnership to increase access to recycling of all materials across the United States.”
Closed Loop Partners Provides $2.6 Million Loan to Build and Scale First Curbside Recycling Program in the City of Broken Arrow to Accelerate Circularity
October 20, 2020
October 20 (New York) – Today, Closed Loop Partners announced a $2.6 million loan to finance new recycling and circular economy infrastructure and activities in the City of Broken Arrow, OK. The funds go toward recycling carts for single-stream curbside collection and recycling collection vehicles. Serving 35,000 households across the city, the program aims to increase the recapture of valuable materials in the City of Broken Arrow, helping to keep these materials in manufacturing supply chains and out of landfills.
Closed Loop Partners’ $2.6 million loan adds to a previously-awarded $390,000 grant by The Recycling Partnership to the city, which was provided by the American Beverage Association via its “Every Bottle Back” initiative. In total, the $4.5 million project comes at a key moment for strengthening recycling infrastructure across the United States, particularly in the Southwest, highlighting the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors to catalyze capital and galvanize stakeholders that can scale impact.
Closed Loop Partners provided the funding through its project finance arm, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Fund. Launched in 2014 in partnership with 12 of the world’s largest consumer goods and retailers, the fund finances recycling infrastructure and innovations across the U.S. to advance the circular economy. With growing pressures from climate change, the need to build resilient local supply chains and mitigate environmental damages has come to the fore. The circular economy provides tangible solutions––lowering greenhouse gas emissions and redirecting waste from landfill, while generating significant economic benefits by keeping valuable materials in circulation. To fully transition to circular material flows, increasing access to strong and stable recycling infrastructure is essential.
Over the next 10 years, the initiative is projected to collect 124 million pounds of recycled material, including over 5 million pounds of new polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and 2 million pounds of new aluminum, creating strong feedstocks for eventual use in various manufacturing streams. The city will send the collected material to American Waste Control, an advanced Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Tulsa for processing. By ensuring that the pipeline of collected materials will be met by demand, the economic viability and long-term circular flow of resources is secured.
“We are thrilled to help bring this initiative to fruition for the City of Broken Arrow,” says Bridget Croke, Managing Director at Closed Loop Partners. “Opening access to and advancing recycling systems in Oklahoma is critical to building local and regional circular systems in the Southwest, and will have significant ripple effects to advancing the circular economy across the United States.”
“We are excited to begin curbside recycling in the City of Broken Arrow. We have already had great participation from our citizens, who are interested in the positive economic and environmental impact recycling will have on our city. The Broken Arrow Municipal Authority looks forward to this initiative to make our city more sustainable,” says Mayor Craig Thurmond on behalf of the Broken Arrow Municipal Authority.
The project officially launches in the fall of 2020, and marks the beginning of a cart-based recycling system for the City of Broken Arrow. For more information on this project, visit RecycleBA.com.
About Closed Loop Partners
Closed Loop Partners is a New York based investment firm comprised of venture capital, growth equity, private equity and project finance, as well as an innovation center focused on building the circular economy.
The firm has built an ecosystem that connects entrepreneurs, industry experts, global consumer goods companies, retailers, financial institutions and municipalities. Their investments align capitalism with positive social and environmental impact by reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions via materials innovation, advanced recycling technologies, supply chain optimization and diversion of materials from disposal.
About the City of Broken Arrow
Located in northeast Oklahoma, Broken Arrow is the fourth largest city in the State of Oklahoma, with an estimated population of over 113,000 people spread out over 61 square miles. Broken Arrow is also home to the third largest manufacturing hub in the state, with many employees working in the energy sector. Residents in Broken Arrow enjoy a high quality of life, characterized by low crime, high performing schools, affordable housing and easy access to many parks and recreational facilities. The City of Broken Arrow sets the standard by providing the best municipal programs and services.