Cascade Engineering: What you put in the bin becomes the bin
If you are an avid recycler, then there is a good chance you use a wheeled cart to bring your mixed recyclables to the curb. Though it may not be considered the most essential aspect of the recycling system, the carts you use are making a greater impact than you realize. You might even use a cart made from the same recyclables you placed it in a year earlier.
Convenience is the name of the game when it comes to encouraging recycling, and carts are the most convenient game in town. In fact, “nearly every top-performing program in the U.S. uses carts” according to The Recycling Partnership. But carts don’t have to be a one trick pony. We have recently entered a world in which carts not only make it easier to recycle, but also make it more valuable.
Cascade Engineering (Cascade) is one of the largest cart manufacturers in the U.S. They have been producing waste and recycling carts since 1989 and have produced over 35 million carts during that time. With the largest injection molding press machine in North America, residing at their facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the company has manufactured enough carts to serve over 1,000 communities since 2008. Cascade’s carts have traditionally been made with virgin high density polyethylene (HDPE), with some commercial post-consumer and post-industrial resin (PIR) content blended in. However, the company has begun incorporating post-consumer curbside resin content, what they refer to as PCCR, over the past two years. This creates a great twist in the circular economy model. It's as simple as “what you put in the bin, becomes the bin.”
The Challenge
In 2018, China announced that they would no longer be importing many kinds of recyclables, including nearly all plastics from the U.S. It seemed as though a surplus of recycled plastics started to pile up overnight. The US recycling economy needed to find new end markets for the overwhelming amount of plastics they were accumulating, and the industry by and large looked inward at domestic manufacturing as the solution. Cascade began working to find a way to leverage their demand pull and use more of this material in their carts. However, they needed to solve three looming problems:
Formulate a way to incorporate more recycled material into their carts without impacting durability and performance;
Provide a range of colors to match the aesthetics that their customers were accustomed to; and
Develop an efficient process to handle and store the amount of PCCR required to meet growing demand.
The Team
Cascade’s largest customer is Waste Management, who, along with The Recycling Partnership and the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), helped spark the demand for this effort. Their primary supply chain partner was HDPE reclamation giant KW Plastics, who supplies the PCCR, derived in part from recycled HDPE collected in Cascade carts and sorted by Waste Management. Cascade funded all of the R&D.
The SOlution
Cascade began tests for a new cart formula with a higher percentage of PCCR. It took a year to develop with their partners to finally find the right blend to meet rigorous testing standards. At the end of February 2020, they launched their first black “EcoCart”. The EcoCart contains 10% post-consumer plastics recovered from curbside recycling systems and a total of 50% recycled content including commercial PCR and PIR. This was the first cart on the market to contain curbside PCCR. However, the new formula could only create black carts, which only served a small portion of the cart market. To best serve the customer they would need to produce more color options. In December of 2020 they created the EcoCart in green, blue and gray, and as of today, they have 7 different color options to choose from.
The Results
Cascade was the first in the market with a PCCR cart that matches the durability and performance of traditional carts and are currently leading the industry in PCCR cart sales. This advancement has also pushed competitors to increase their own use of PCR in their products. EcoCart recently received the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) Design for Recycling award.
What’s Next?
Cascade envisions a future with a more localized circular economy, where they can source PCCR generated and reclaimed in Michigan and other regions across the country. While this supply chain is not quite viable yet in Michigan, an increase in curbside recycling and reclamation infrastructure are goals for NextCycle Michigan, so this vision may be closer than we think.