A partnership between Great Lakes Tissue, Carton Council, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to provide funds to better handle food and beverage cartons.
Great Lakes Tissue, a manufacturer of 100-percent-recycled tissue and paper products in Cheboygan, Michigan, has partnered with the Carton Council of North America and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) to help boost sustainability by improving manufacturing and recycling infrastructure in the state.
The mill says for 30 years it has been utilizing 100-percent-recycled material, including cartons and other postconsumer products, to make tissue products, and now seeks to recycle more food and beverage cartons and to find what it calls “a better use for the small percentage of polyethylene (PE) and poly/aluminum in cartons. Great Lakes Tissue has now partnered with the Carton Council and EGLE, as well as the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD), to fund the effort.
The funding has provided the mill with new equipment to better handle the poly and poly/aluminum residual from the pulping process and, along with allowing the mill to process more cartons, the equipment also removes more moisture from PE and poly/aluminum, which it says significantly decreases its weight and allowing for more efficient transport with lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The company says it also can recapture the water and recycle it back into the process for reuse.
“The new equipment has allowed us to reduce the water content in our material from 65 percent to 17 percent, far exceeding our goal of 25 percent,” says Julie LaFond, plant engineer and general project manager at Great Lakes Tissue. “This lower moisture allows for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as we can haul the same volume of materials in fewer loads.”
MDARD Director Gary McDowell says his department is “proud to invest in technology helping reduce food and beverage cartons from ending up landfills while supporting a Michigan-based business.”
Currently, Great Lakes Tissue says the small amount of poly/aluminum residue is sent to St. Mary’s Cement in Charlevoix, Michigan, where it offsets the use of coal as fuel versus being sent to landfill, and the company adds that it continues to explore alternative uses for the material with a goal of eventually using it to make new products.
“Our goal is to keep cartons out of landfills and ensure they are able to go on to have a second life,” says Jason Pelz, vice president of recycling projects at the Carton Council and vice president of sustainability, U.S., Canada, Central America and Caribbean for Tetra Pak. “We are delighted to help fund these efforts and believe it is a model that could be replicated in other locations.”
The 54,000-square-foot addition includes four extrusion lines with the ability to expand to six, processing 11.8 billion bottles annually.
Evergreen, a supplier of food and nonfood grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), has finished its building and production expansion at its facility in Clyde, Ohio.
The company says the expansion began in 2021 as a $22 million project with three lines and evolved as a result of increased customer and consumer demand for rPET plastic. The 54,000-square-foot addition includes four extrusion lines with the ability to expand to six, processing 11.8 billion bottles annually. This will result in a local capacity of 113 million pounds of food-grade PET annually. Evergreen says it processes 217 million pounds of PET bottles across its four North American facilities.
This expansion was made possible in part by American Beverage Association and the Ohio Beverage Association, in partnership with Closed Loop Partners, as part of a $5 million investment under the beverage industry’s Every Bottle Back initiative. Evergreen says the investment helped it evolve its business model, expand its services to process recycled PET plastic into food-grade recycled rPET pellets used to manufacture new bottles and create a strong local market for recycled plastics.
“The team at Evergreen and our partners Ohio Beverage Association and Closed Loop Partners are looking forward to sharing this expansion project with our customers and community,” says Omar Abuaita, CEO of Evergreen. “With the financial and strategic support of The Sterling Group, we can respond to the demands of the consumer through growth and innovation and are preparing to share a first-of-its-kind industry announcement soon.”
The expansion has added 20 manufacturing and management jobs in the Sandusky County region. Evergreen employs 350 manufacturing workers, managers and organizational leaders across four locations in North America. This includes Clyde, Ohio; Riverside, California; Albany, New York; Amherst, and Nova Scotia, Canada.
“We’re excited to support Evergreen’s expansion, which will help Ohio’s beverage companies reduce our use of new plastic and keep our 100 percent recyclable plastic bottles out of the environment,” says Kimberly McConville, executive director of the Ohio Beverage Association. “Our industry is committed to using more recycled content in our containers and Evergreen’s bold leadership will help ensure our bottles get remade as intended.”
The organization says total shipments in June for both grades decreased compared with last year.
The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, has released its June 2022 printing-writing and packaging papers monthly reports, which indicate shipments for both grades decreased compared with June 2021.
According to the printing-writing paper report, shipments decreased 2 percent in June compared with June 2021 while total inventory levels decreased 2 percent compared with May 2022.
The AF&PA also reports U.S. purchases of total printing-writing papers increased 3 percent in June compared with last year.
The AF&PA says packaging and specialty packaging shipments in June decreased 4 percent compared with June 2021 and essentially were flat compared with the same six months of 202.
The packaging papers report also shows:
The ground glass pozzolan, made by Urban Mining Industries, can be found in projects across New York and Connecticut.
For more than a decade, New Rochelle, New York-based Urban Mining Industries has been advancing a new use for recycled glass in the form of Pozzotive, a ground glass pozzolan used in concrete production. Like other artificial pozzolanic materials such as coal fly ash, ground glass can assume cement-like qualities when it reacts with a combination of water and cement. Patrick Grasso of the Grasso family, owners of Urban Mining Industries, says Pozzotive strengthens concrete and lowers CO2 emissions. In using locally sourced glass, Pozzotive also has ushered in a circular economy for the glass industry in Connecticut, where it is now being made.
Grasso, a partner with Urban Mining Industries, says his family has long been involved in the construction industry. The Grassos’ story starts more than 15 years ago with the family first obtaining a block manufacturing plant in upstate New York. After rebuilding the plant, they used it to make grey construction block. Louis Grasso Jr., Patrick’s nephew, wanted to find a way to distinguish their gray block from every other gray block made in America. After Louis was advised to include recycled content in the block, a series of trial-and-error tests were done to find a material that could meet this goal. It was decided that glass was the best choice. After realizing the use of bigger chunks of glass wasn’t the best approach, they eventually created a fine powder of ground glass that became Pozzotive.
“So, as a result of that block manufacturing plant, we were able to see the market way back then when no one else was willing to experiment with this kind of stuff,” Patrick Grasso says.
The magic of Pozzotive’s effect in concrete, Patrick Grasso says, starts with a chemical reaction when it is paired with water and cement. Before Pozzotive becomes involved, the hydration of cement introduces two key compounds. One is calcium silicate hydrate (CSH), which Grasso says is the “glue” that develops the concrete’s strength. The other product is calcium hydroxide (CH), which conversely weakens the concrete and causes porosity. When a ground glass pozzolan is introduced, it gives up a silica atom and joins the CH to become CSH. This pozzolanic reaction allows ground glass to gain cementing properties and act as a partial replacement to cement. In most mixes, Pozzotive replaces 20 or 30 percent of cement.
Initially, Pozzotive was produced in small quantities at a product validation plant in New York. Before 2022, the company was mostly focused on getting a solid footing in the pozzolan market. It took four years, Grasso says, to obtain an ASTM 1866 standard that specifically confirmed the viability of ground glass pozzolans in concrete. This process involved a committee of industry professionals that vetted and signed off on 3rd party testing done with Pozzotive.
Since its inception, Pozzotive has been used in projects at various locations, most of which are in New York and Connecticut. Some of these include the ESPN Digital Center 2, the New York Police Academy and the Second Avenue subway station in Manhattan. During the UN General Assembly Building’s renovation, 60 tons of window glass were harvested from the building and used to create pavers with Pozzotive for the UN Plaza. Grasso says smaller projects in Connecticut that have used Pozzotive, including Ox Ridge Elementary School in Darien and New Canaan Library in Canaan, particularly demonstrate the significance of Pozzotive in building a local circular economy.
In addition to supporting a circular economy, Patrick Grasso says Pozzotive addresses other challenges in the glass recycling industry: the cleaning and separating of glass and costs associated with transporting and logistics if a processor is not nearby. A common route for recycled glass is turning it back into bottles, but complications can arise in this process as the glass needs to be separated by color and any ceramics need must be removed because of their different melting temperature. The color of the glass does not affect Pozzotive, and pieces of ceramics are welcome since they are pozzolanic as well. Pozzotive also can use glass from electronics that don’t contain lead, plate glass and demolition glass. The glass is taken through a cleaning and separating process and is milled into a pozzolan that is 95 percent smaller than 325 mesh, Grasso says.
A primary issue within the cement industry, Grasso says, is CO2 emissions. Cement production accounts for about 7 percent of all global carbon emissions, and the U.S. alone uses more than 100 million tons of cement per year, he says. Twice as much concrete is used in construction than wood, plastics and aluminum combined. Even though common postindustrial cement replacements such as fly ash and slag, which is residue from steel manufacturing, can create a lower carbon concrete, Grasso says he considers postconsumer ground glass an even better replacement.
“A glass bottle is a glass bottle pretty much anywhere in the world in terms of its chemical composition … you can make a very consistent finished product because of the feedstock you’re starting with,” he says.
Grasso says that every ton of cement generates almost a ton of CO2. Urban Mining Industries has done testing to replace up to 50 percent of cement in concrete with Pozzotive, reducing the carbon footprint by almost a ton–for–ton basis of the cement it replaces, he says.
Pozzotive has other benefits that exhibit how it enhances performance of concrete along with its sustainable qualities. Concrete with greater percentages of Pozzotive feature a brighter white color, meaning it can reduce the heat island effect in urban areas, where temperatures are higher in light of a greater abundance of manufactured surfaces that absorb heat. Grasso says Pozzotive does a greater job of preventing efflorescence—when a white powdery substance bleeds out of concrete—and shrinkage, which means less cracking. He says concrete with Pozzotive is five-times more powerful in reducing moisture and chloride penetration than a straight cement mix.
“I think it’s a holistic solution, a climate solution, a health solution—avoiding heavy metals and some of these other alternatives … and the circular economy issue about really just taking regenerative waste streams regionally and putting them back into those regions,” he says.
Pozzotive has been used by different companies and organizations, including Torrington, Connecticut-based ready mix company O&G Industries. T.J. Oneglia, vice president at O&G, says he believes the use of pozzolans in general is likely on the rise in the concrete industry. Oneglia points to recent trends of using more recycled material and lowering buildings’ carbon footprint.
“I am seeing support in our local market from the designers, the architects, the engineers and also the owners and the end users of the concrete. [There is] a desire to build green, and so Pozzotive, just by its very nature, in my opinion, is greener than the other sources of materials,” Oneglia says.
Ground glass pozzolans in particular could experience higher demand due to potential supply issues with other pozzolans, Oneglia says.
He says O&G plans to continue using Pozzotive mixes, which are starting to be specified on school projects and municipal projects.
“We intend to supply it as an ingredient in our concrete wherever and whenever it’s specified,” Oneglia says. “And then, in addition to that, we intend to use it just as a part of our daily concrete when we’re able to.”
Patrick Grasso says Urban Mining Industries’ focus is now on further commercializing Pozzotive and using it for bigger projects. The first large scale Pozzotive plant was established in Beacon Falls, Connecticut, in 2021. Grasso says this is a good central location from a glass feedstock perspective and allows Urban Mining Industries to serve the greater metropolitan New York market while also expanding into the Boston market. The new facility will allow the company to produce an estimated 50,000 tons of Pozzotive, Grasso says.
“We had to go through this four-year process of getting an ASTM standard. And we’ve had to have this product in use now for over 10 years to make sure it wasn’t some fly-by-night thing, it was real. We had to have the first plant up that can produce it commercially, large scale, and so all of those steps are now in place. So, any market where there is a need of a glass solution of some reasonable size, we can be there,” he says.
Packaging producer says results were driven by strong execution in its consumer packaging and industrial paper packaging segments.
Global packaging producer Sonoco, based in Hartsville, South Carolina, has reported record net sales and net income for its second quarter, which ended July 3.
Sonoco reports net sales were $1.91 billion, an approximately 38 percent increase from second quarter 2021 sales of $1.38 billion, and net income per diluted share was $1.33 compared with a loss of $3.34 in the same period in 2021.
"Our Sonoco team delivered strong second-quarter results which exceeded the high-end of our raised guidance," Sonoco President and CEO Howard Coker says. "Our current-quarter performance represents a step-change improvement year over year and resulted in record sales and record net income driven by continued strong execution in our consumer packaging and industrial paper packaging segments."
Coker adds that the company's second-quarter earnings primarily benefited from continued strong strategic pricing performances across most of its businesses, continued strong results from the Sonoco Metal Packaging acquisition and productivity gains.
Sonoco says its consumer packaging segment achieved record sales while operating profit grew nearly 114 percent compared with the same period in 2021, and its industrial paper packaging segment improved nearly 57 percent compared with last year.
The company also reports its operating profit is up approximately 6 percent.
"I am extremely proud of the way our team has advanced our value-creation strategy to produce the best first-half financial operating performance in the history of Sonoco," Coker says.
Sonoco also provided an update for its Project Horizon, which includes a planned shutdown of its corrugated medium machine in Hartsville to transform the machine into what it calls the "lowest-cost producer of uncoated recycled paperboard (URB) in North America." The eight-week shutdown is expected to negatively impact the company's third-quarter industrial paper packaging operating profit between $10 million and $15 million.
Project Horizon is a $125 million investment to update the Hartsville machine and will have an annual production capacity of 180,000 tons. The project is expected to be completed at the end of the third quarter and, once finished, will use 100-percent-recycled fibers to produce paper and will allow Sonoco to eliminate the manufacturing complex's virgin pulp mill and chemical recovery operation.
Sonoco's full second-quarter financial report can be found here.