WSC Builds Network to Tackle Hard-to-Recycle StreamsWSC Builds Network to Tackle Hard-to-Recycle Streams

Nonconventional waste streams are routinely landfilled by the tonnage because, while they have value, they are tough to recycle. Even more easily recycled materials fall through the cracks when low volumes or other restraints deter haulers and processors from dealing with them.

WSC (aka Whits Services Corporation) has stepped in to recover the challenging streams, as well as the conventional ones when there are few options.

The St. Louis, Missouri-based operation works with over 4,000 partners, mainly specialized processors and logistics companies for support in servicing WSC customers who include industrial manufacturers, retail chains, final-mile logistics companies, and others.

WSC targets national corporations with multiple locations and consistent, reoccurring streams, with Lowe’s, Electrolux, Samsung, and Amazon among the bigger players.

The demand is there, says Mark Whitley, CEO of WSC.  He says the company fields about 1,000 work orders a week and orchestrates collections and processing for about a dozen streams.

White goods (household appliances); expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam; and wood materials, mainly form shipping, are among the top recovered materials.

Whitley believes the biggest impact, especially from an environmental perspective, comes from having an answer for EPS foam. The material can take hundreds of years to decompose. And given that it’s about 95 percent air, it eats up volumes of landfill space as well as truck capacity to haul it to its next stop, whether landfill or recycling facility.

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“When you transport foam, you max out the volume well before you max out the weight of the truck. It has to be manually sorted to be sure no tape, glue, or paper residue [rides in] on the foam, and then it has to be compacted,” Whitley says.

Through this network model, truckloads of this fluffy material are recovered, mainly from home delivery services, and hauled to nearby facilities where it is run through densifiers and ground. Ultimately it is reincorporated into picture frames, surfboards, and other products.

End-of-life white goods come mainly from large retailers who take them back from customers when they deliver new ones.

First WSC’s vendors recover the refrigerant, a sought-after service as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the use of these ozone-depleting gases in new appliances and requires their safe removal from old ones.  But those gases can be reused in other white goods, so specialized partners retrieve, clean, and recycle them.

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The copper wire and electric motors go downstream to nonferrous metal processors who separate the copper from the wire for use in new smelting. The empty carcasses move on to metal scrap yards for new steel production.

With wood shipping containers, odd-sized pallets, pallets from low-volume locations, and wood crates are picked up and processed.

There’s a lot of this material to be had as flooring, automotive parts, and some other materials come in nonstandard wood crates that traditional pallet companies aren’t interested in servicing.

Standard-sized pallets in fairly good condition are rebuilt or reused. If they are odd-sized or beyond repair, they typically go through a grinder and are turned into mulch, sawdust, or animal bedding.

Then there are the not-so-odd, more standard materials.

“We say no to requests when there are readily accessible options such as when a company routinely has truckloads of pallets or bailed cardboard—there are plenty of companies that can deal with them,” Whitley says.

“It’s when there are low volumes or sporadic volumes, or when for some reason companies can’t service conventional materials in a traditional way that we can really fill gaps.”

The model worked out well for a church organization with thousands of unwanted metal folding chairs, and it worked out for the recyclers who got ahold of their high-value metal. The only problem was that the heaps of chairs were scattered across 300 locations; some sites had only a couple dozen of them while others had hundreds to nearly a thousand.  Given the breadth of vendors across the network’s wide footprint it was worth the while to pick up all of them and haul them to local processors.

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WSC’s customer base extends beyond generators. Sometimes the operation caters to waste and recycling companies, supporting them in servicing their client base.

Texas-based EL Recycling brings Whitley’s team in for backup when it fields service requests for EPS foam, bedding, white goods, and scrap metal.

The foam and refrigerant are among the most challenging to deal with, yet EL Recycling manages to divert, on average, 100-plus tons of EPS foam annually and to recover over 5,000 ounces of refrigerant for recycling and reuse.

“When we do not have processing capabilities WSC has been and continues to be a strategic partner to us in building, administering, and reporting national account programs,” says Yunive Rouvroy, CEO EL Recycling.

Mid Atlantic Express is in the vendor network, delivering WSC customers’ commodities to their end-of-life destinations.

Transporting materials like white goods, EPS foam, or other specialized materials involves unique considerations to ensure safety, efficiency, and regulatory compliance.  

There are stringent reporting requirements, and meticulous monitoring and tracking are paramount.  Then there are challenges in running a multistate operation—from keeping up with a patchwork of recycling and disposal rules for hazardous materials to optimizing routes to accommodate state-specific restrictions.

“Too many times you will run into companies that are too far removed from the challenges transportation has in ensuring the assignment is safely and compliantly completed,” says Erin Summers-Bogdan operations manager SE/Region, Mid Atlantic Express.

An appreciation of businesses who get the complexities is largely what drew the company to the network.

“We choose to work with WSC for their team's personal attention to detail, integrity, and understanding both sides of the coin [recycling/processing and transportation] in this industry,” says Summers- Bogdan.

Looking toward the future, Whitley anticipates more business opportunities as companies prioritize reducing their carbon footprint where they can.

“More corporations seem to be focusing on sustainability and recycling initiatives, and they are doing it across their locations. They are looking for options when their regular waste and recycling provider doesn't have a solution for these harder to manage streams.

“The need is there. We just have to fill that gap.”