[ad_1]
Dive Brief:
- Next Cycle, a business accelerator program for recycling market development initiatives, is instrumental in advancing the state’s circular economy plans and helping businesses expand in Michigan, Colorado and Washington.
- At a Wednesday webinar hosted by the Northeast Recycling Council, public and private sector recyclers and businesses discussed how NextCycle has helped them network business connections, funding opportunities and technical mentors to install better equipment faster, improve rural recycling and expand access. Accelerating business expansion.
- According to suppliers, the business acceleration model is an important way to build investments and partnerships in the recycling system, which not only makes projects work faster, but also strengthens the relationship between state environmental protection agencies, municipalities, recyclers, end markets and equipment manufacturers.
Dive Insight:
As more states pass laws that increase recycling goals and establish extended liability programs, NextCycle sees itself as a way to help businesses and municipalities keep pace with the growing demands of a circular economy.
Those looking to start or grow recycling or waste disposal projects often face obstacles such as financial issues, lack of key partners, uncertain end markets or insufficient support from a growth plan, says Elisa Seltzer, senior consultant at Resource Recycling Systems.
The next cycle is the RRS initiative, with each participant The state environmental protection agency and Many industry partners such as the Carton Council, Closed Loop Partners, Dow, the Foodservice Packaging Institute and the State Recycling Coalition.
Applicants can choose different “tracks” depending on their business goals, but the end result is to take a specific project – facility expansion or R&D goal – from spark to reality.
Much of the webinar focused on the program’s impact in Michigan, a state that aims to increase recycling to 30% by 2025 and 45% by 2030. The current rate is about 19.3%..
Matt Fletcher, recycling market development specialist for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said the state needs to invest in recycling markets and circular economy projects to collect the estimated 2.7 million tons of materials needed to reach the goal. 45% recycling goal. EGLE leads Next cycle in the state.
“Markets are very important to create the attraction of that demand, but make sure that the system is working so that the producers of those materials can use what they need,” he said.
Since NextCycle Michigan was first announced in 2020, it has supported 90 different groups working on foam recycling programs, municipal data collection projects for market feasibility studies, vermicompost startups and more, Seltzer said.
Paulina Leung, Emterra’s chief sustainability officer, said the association with NextCycle helped accelerate two major infrastructure goals. The recycler uses EGLE’s help to sort robotic food service items and another rack for the glass stream, which has less capacity to separate cartons from transfer stations and smaller MRFs, she said.
Emterra received funding for a new learning center at the Lansing MRF, and the next cycle used the relationship to get advice on how to better design the learning content.
Rebecca Hu, co-founder of AI robotics sorting company Glacier, said NextCycle has helped the company expand from Balsam, San Francisco, to Michigan, testing new models during Michigan’s harsh winters while installing them at two local MRFs. “We’re excited to hit the ground running, and we hope this will be a case study” for continued business expansion, she said.
While NextCycle was well established in Michigan, the program was. First established In Colorado, the state Department of Public Health and Environment runs the Michigan model with similar public and private partners. So far, 24 groups have started projects to improve recycling and recycling in the region, including Table Two Farm Compost, which needs support in building a business plan and finding funding to provide a primary service serving rural areas of the region, Seltzer said.
Businesses and municipalities are making these investments as Colorado prepares to implement them. New EPR for packaging lawIt calls for packaging manufacturers to fund a statewide recycling program.
Next cycle Washington He started the program this year. Kamal Patel, co-founder of Traversal Design, who is providing technical support for the program, is designing how it can meet the state’s unique needs, specifically creating a program structure with underserved communities at the table. . This includes creating more accessible communication strategies, ensuring that community members occupy at least half of the decision-making roles, and identifying barriers that make the next round of application processes difficult.
“We want to encourage more participation, more inclusion, more collaboration. But to do that, we have to have a paradigm shift in how we interact with communities,” Patel said.
[ad_2]
Source link