Professionals interested in building the circular economy are convening in Seattle for Circularity 2023. The speaker list is packed with forward-looking brands, knowledgeable consultants, and visionary non-profit organizations.
As recyclers, we are thrilled to see how far this conversation has come. Casella has been investing in recycling infrastructure since the 1970s with millions of dollars helping our customers recover more of their waste, continuously adapting to shifts in product design and buying behaviors.
Our first Sustainability Report was published in 2009 where we introduced the circular graphic below depicting cooperation and collaboration throughout product supply chains. We understood that while resource renewal would be integral to achieving a circular economy, we could only advance so far on our own. We needed brands, retailers, and consumers to join us.
Recycling is a necessary component to establishing a true circular economy. Its goal is to reuse, repair, and remanufacture products and materials to minimize environmental impact. Recyclers play a key role in managing the continuous flow of these materials.
Today, with more partners stepping up to the circularity challenge, what is the role of recyclers? How can we all work together to achieve the important goals of circularity? First, we need to step back and answer a few basic questions.
What is circularity? By now, we all know that the current economy is mostly linear. Resources are extracted from the environment to make products that are discarded. In a circular economy, resources would be systematically returned to the economy, to significantly reduce or even eliminate extraction of natural resources. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has contributed a lot of graphics and videos to illustrate this idea.
How circular are we today, and why does it matter? According to the latest edition of the Circularity Gap Report, each year the global economy consumes over 100 billion tons of material, and only 7.2% makes it back into the economy. This means that our economy is heavily reliant on virgin materials extracted from the environment, which in turn means we are unsustainably depleting our water, soil, and air.
How do we become more circular? That same report describes four key strategies for becoming more circular, namely: 1) Use less, 2) Use longer, 3) Use again, and 4) Make clean. Number three is where recycling fits in. And number four has to do with using renewable energy and regenerative materials. As the Circularity Gap Report puts it, “there is much more to the circular economy than just recycling.”
Casella’s work to advance the four key strategies of circularity
A materials management evolution at Casella is contributing to the circularity revolution. We have built a business around helping customers meet their sustainability goals by finding ways to put waste to its highest and best use. We are constantly innovating to capture more value from society’s waste streams so we can return high-quality raw materials to the economy.
Recycling has been at the core of Casella’s business since the beginning when we founded Vermont’s first recycling facility. So recycling is the foundation that we stand on. Our long-standing experience enables us to support our customers with all four of the circularity strategies.
While it is true that “there is much more to the circular economy than just recycling,” we know it is also true that there can be no circular economy without recycling. Casella plays a key role in the emerging circular economy and is well-positioned to recover materials and return them to sustainable product supply chains. In addition to servicing our customers and investing in infrastructure, we can continue to advocate for smart design changes that will reduce waste and improve durability, to push for clearer labels that will help our customers recycle with confidence, and to evolve in ways that ensure our industry will continue to support and accelerate circularity in the years ahead.
Casella Waste Systems, Inc., headquartered in Rutland, Vermont, is the Northeast’s largest recycler and most experienced fully integrated resource management company. Founded in 1975 as a single truck collection service, Casella has grown its operations to provide solid waste collection and disposal, transfer, recycling, and organics services to more than 900,000 residential, commercial, municipal, institutional, and industrial customers throughout the Northeast, and professional resource management services to over 10,000 customer locations in more than 40 states.