Initial Can Capture Grant Recipients Announced

Recycling facilities in North Carolina and Texas will use Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI)’s aluminum beverage can capture grants to install equipment that will result in 540 tons, more than 36 million aluminum beverage cans, per year being captured that were previously missorted, according to Crown. 

These recycling facilities are the initial recipients of a grant program made possible with the support of can manufacturers Ardagh Group and Crown Holdings. 

The Recycling Partnership helped select the grantees and will provide technical assistance to ensure successful implementation, Crown said.

The grant program builds off the CMI research released last year that found it is critical to capture all used beverage cans (UBC) flowing through material recovery facilities (MRF), which play a critical role in the U.S. recycling system of sorting recyclables. 

This research concluded that most MRFs in the United States would not be able to operate without the revenue from UBCs considering they are consistently the most valuable beverage package material in the recycling stream.

Due to the success of this initial round of grantees, a new round of applications to the pilot program has been added. The deadline to apply is Tuesday, May 11.

“It is important for the health of our nation’s recycling system to capture every aluminum beverage can for recycling,” CMI president Robert Budway said. “Aluminum beverage cans provide 33 percent of the revenue to MRFs in non-deposit states, which is more than any other residential recyclable. Additionally, CMI beverage can members, Ardagh and Crown, want all used cans back to make them into new cans using the infinitely recyclable aluminum. Capturing missorted cans at the MRF is a cost-effective way to capture the valuable aluminum from cans. The return on investment of capturing incremental used can volumes is so high that additional equipment MRFs install will pay for itself in a short period of time.”

“As one of the founding organizations of what would become The Recycling Partnership, we are grateful to CMI’s continued dedication to improving the U.S. residential recycling system, ensuring that more used beverage cans are sorted and recycled, creating healthier, more efficient, and more cost-effective programs at scale,” said Rich Simon, director of MRF advancement at The Recycling Partnership. “With The Partnership’s extensive expertise in grant programs – including other recent grants with MRFs – and our systemic approach to improving residential recycling, we will ensure this program achieves its goals of recycling more aluminum cans and improving the U.S. residential recycling system.”

The grant money provided to these two MRFs is being combined with other sources of funding at a ratio of more than 1 to 10. The two MRFs are operated by Independent Texas Recyclers (ITR), Houston, TX, and Curbside Management, Asheville, NC.

The ITR facility is a single-stream MRF serving the Houston area. It will put the grant funding toward installing a second eddy current to capture UBCs from the containers in the residue (i.e., material destined for landfill) line.

The Curbside Management facility is a single-stream MRF serving Asheville, NC, and surrounding communities, and it is the largest MRF in Western North Carolina. 

The facility is replacing its existing eddy current with a state-of-the-art eddy current that can more effectively sort aluminum packaging at the volume flowing through the facility.

ITR and Curbside Management are just the first two recipients, with additional grantees expected to be announced in the middle of this year and initial impact results expected by the end of 2021. 

These grants are part of an aluminum can capture program that was initially announced in October 2020 with a request for proposals released in January 2021.