At Casella’s newly upgraded Willimantic facility, blue conveyors carry mixed recyclables beneath optical sorters that separate cardboard, paper and plastics. The technology boosts processing to 27 tons per hour — an investment that increases both quality and quantity of materials targeted for reuse.
The company built Vermont’s first recycling facility just two years after its founding. Its foresight continues through efforts like the Casella Center for Circular Economy at the University of Vermont, which advances research in circular waste solutions — shifting from a linear waste-to-landfill model toward continuous reuse.
Robert Cappadona, currently vice president of resource solutions, joined Casella in 1999. At that point, Casella was primarily focused on residential recycling with dual-stream sorting, where divided trucks picked up paper/cardboard on one side and containers like plastic, metal and glass on the other.
In the 2000s, single-stream recycling launched on the West Coast. Casella was the first in the Northeast to convert its Vermont facility from the multi-stream method to single-stream recycling.
“There's a lot more technology today,” Cappadona said. “In the old days, with dual-stream there was a lot of manual hand-sorting. Today, technology such as optical sorters, magnets, eddy currents and glass breakers is used in the processing of single stream.”
When residential customers no longer have to pre-sort, their recycling participation increases.
“All of a sudden you have a lot more volume,” Cappadona said. “Folks are making it very convenient to recycle, as opposed to the dual stream.”
Recent upgrades at the Willimantic, Connecticut, and Charlestown, Massachusetts, material recovery facilities have increased both the volume of recyclables handled and the quality of the finished bundles.
“We're increasing the throughput by 35% to 40% and we're increasing the quality of the material that we're shipping into the market by 30% or 35%,” John Casella said in the spring. “That’s a very dramatic increase.”
Making sure that households know what and how to recycle is among the responsibilities of Abbie Webb, Casella’s vice president of sustainability.
“We're providing marketing materials and education materials to make sure that our individual households understand their recycling programs, have a level of confidence and know what to put in the bin and what not to put in,” she said.
Recycling guidelines are particularly important so residents can maximize things that can be reused. Avoiding “tanglers,” like ropes and wires, that snag on equipment, or lithium batteries, which explode when crushed, are not just a reusability concern but a safety measure.
As part of its 2030 sustainability goals, Casella aims to reduce, reuse or recycle more than 2 million tons of solid waste per year. It has increased its materials management by 36% from 2019 to 2023, currently recycling more than 1.4 million tons annually.
While improvements in recycling technology have contributed to this, it’s also due to Casella’s work in reducing waste at the source and better handling of mixed materials. In the last 15 years or so, Casella has also expanded its work with commercial and industrial clients.
“I spend a lot of time with industrial manufacturing customers, health care and higher education: clients who have ambitious goals around Zero Waste or waste reduction,” Webb said.
Casella’s sustainability advisors work with commercial customers to assess all their material needs, not just how to reduce the volume of waste that’s leaving a facility.
“It becomes more of a conversation of those products that they're making, do those have pathways to recycling?” Webb said.
Webb said Casella also helps clients design products and supply chains that incorporate recycled materials.
She gave the example of a syringe manufacturer. It can make a product that is recyclable, but it can’t force hospitals to recycle it. Casella, however, can work with the hospital to put in place systems that collect the syringes and manage the recycling chain, because there are places that will want to buy that recycled plastic.
“Since 2018, Casella has pledged that we will not sell any plastics overseas,” Cappadona said. “All of our traditional curbside plastics are sold domestically. There's plenty of markets, there's plenty of capacity, and there's no need for it to be shipped.”
Casella has also invested in workflows and technology that help maximize materials from mixed sources. Separating multi-material waste was previously time-intensive and not always financially feasible, but improvements in mechanical separation are making it easier, faster and less costly.
Depackaging technology helps divert packaged food waste by separating it from plastic, glass or cardboard containers. This allows food to be composted, used for biogas production or even sold as animal feed.
“I think society underestimates how much packaged food gets generated,” Webb said. “We picture our leftovers, we picture our plate scrapings, but packaged food is a huge area of food waste, and we have solutions for that, too.”
At any manufacturing facility, there will be a small percentage of products that don’t meet quality standards due to misaligned labels, loose lids, product line changes or other issues. Previously, these rejects would go to a landfill or incinerator.
“We've invested in technology to separate the packaging from the food: big steel machines that break the packaging apart,” Webb said. “Then, best case scenario, we can both recycle the packaging and send the food or beverage to an anaerobic digester to make renewable energy or return the nutrients to the soil. That's really one of those hidden parts of the waste stream that people don't know about, which turned out to be a big part of the puzzle once we started looking at it.”
Mattresses, which can take up lots of landfill space, are another multi-material product that can be disassembled so that wood, metal springs, foam and fabric can be recycled independently.
“Mattress recycling is an area that, 10 years ago, I don't think most people would have believed that would be a viable recycling material,” Webb said. “We've actually found that there are mattresses primarily composed of recyclable material, and the key is to get it separated.”
For Casella, reclaiming waste and connecting it with better and higher uses is critical to its sustainability and financial goals.
“Every home and business in our country and beyond makes some form of waste and recycling output,” Webb said. “The work we do is often around efficiency.”
The company keeps a wide perspective on that, looking at everything from the most effective collection routes to finding solutions for complicated waste streams. The more Casella is able to find avenues for recyclables, the less new raw materials will need to be extracted, as well.
“The real promise and potential of recycling is the opportunity to reduce the extraction of resources all over the world,” Webb said. “If you think of whether it's recycled paper, plastic or metal, you're bringing that back into the supply chain.”
Furthermore, in the Northeast, landfill disposal capacity is not what it once was, so finding those reuse diversions is an economical mission and an ecological one.
Investments in better recycling systems, collaboration with clients and a drive for innovation have positioned Casella as a champion for waste reduction.
As people pay more attention to products they use and where they end up, Casella is there as a champion to help meet their Zero Waste goals.
“We want to find a higher and better use for everything that's in the waste stream that's going to ultimate disposal,” Casella said. “We’re going to be the first to cannibalize our business in landfills.”
Casella Waste Systems, Inc., headquartered in Rutland, Vermont, is one of the largest recyclers and most experienced fully integrated resource management companies in the Eastern United States. 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 one million residential, commercial, municipal, institutional, and industrial customers and provides professional resource management services to over 10,000 customer locations in more than 40 states.
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