LRS is receiving $3 million from the beverage industry’s Every Bottle Back initiative for recycling equipment upgrades at its new MRF in Chicago, one of the larger investments for the initiative.
The funding, backed by American Beverage and Closed Loop Partners, is meant to help LRS increase the “quality and quantity” of materials it processes at the new facility, particularly beverage containers, the organizations announced on Friday. The $50 million MRF, dubbed The Exchange, focuses heavily on automation to better process larger volumes of material it receives from a municipal contract with the city of Chicago and elsewhere. It became operational in February and held its grand opening earlier this week. It has the capacity to process 35 tons an hour.
LRS Chief Operating Officer John Larsen said the funding would help continue to improve the new MRF. When fully operational, the MRF is expected to process around 260 million pounds of recyclable materials a year, including around 10 million pounds of PET and 3 million pounds of aluminum, LRS said in a news release.
“Not only does this investment benefit the City of Chicago, but as one of the nation’s largest independent waste diversion and recycling providers, it will also help us achieve the milestones and technology to expand our efforts outside city limits in the future,” he said.
In a separate announcement of the MRF’s official opening, LRS credited “crucial capital support from a range of different investors” for getting the facility running. That included additional financial support from Closed Loop Partners to “integrate new technologies into the facility and bolster potential end markets for recycled materials, furthering the establishment of robust circular systems in the region.” CLP has also invested in another LRS facility near Chicago.
“Advancing the infrastructure needed to support a circular economy is a key step to reducing waste and recovering a range of valuable resources, including the PET needed to accelerate circularity for the beverage industry,” said Jennifer Louie, head of the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, in a statement.
LRS has previously received other grants for upgrades at the new MRF, including one from The Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition for an optical sorter that specifically targets PP.
American Beverage says this MRF investment is among about three dozen projects funded by the Every Bottle Back initiative, which has invested about $23.7 million in funding since it was announced in 2019. Combined, the projects are meant to collect 754 million more pounds of PET and 60 million more pounds of aluminum over the next 10 years, the association said.
The initiative has funded other MRF building projects as well as curbside recycling and cart projects, including in the Illinois cities of LaSalle and Villa Park.
