Lane County’s advanced recycling facility aims to generate renewable energy and lower landfill use

In October, Lane County signed a contract with Eugene-based Bulk Handling Systems to create a state-of-the-art recycling center unlike any other in Oregon. It will sort garbage and commingled recycling and produce methane from the organic waste, generating renewable natural gas. According to the county, it will be ​“the most technologically advanced waste processing facility in the country,” diverting about 80,000 tons from the county’s landfill annually. That could extend the life of the county-owned landfill by 20 years, officials say, while reducing the amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Landfills are a major source of methane, which can also be harmful to human health.

Steve Miller, the CEO of Bulk Handling Systems, and Lane County Public Works Director Dan Hurley join us to explain how this project came into being, its environmental goals and the implications for other metro areas with similar waste issues.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Work is about to start on a new waste processing facility in Lane County. It will sort garbage and commingled recycling, and generate renewable natural gas from organic waste. The county is not shy about what this will mean. They say it’ll be the most technologically advanced waste processing facility in the country. They estimate that it will divert 80,000 tons of material from the county’s landfill every year, while reducing the amount of methane that’s released into the atmosphere.

This is a public-private partnership and we’re joined now by both sides of the deal. Dan Hurley is the Lane County Public Works director. Steve Miller is the CEO of Eugene-based Bulk Handling Systems – they are developing this project. Welcome to you both.

Dan Hurley: Thank you for having us.

Steve Miller: Yes. Thank you.

D. Miller: Dan, first. What’s the big problem – or big problems, plural – that you are trying to solve?

Hurley: So two of them are our climate impact with the methane that’s released from landfills. Landfills are one of the biggest sources of methane, and methane contributes to about 20% of our global warming across the planet. We’re trying to reduce our impact there in Lane County. So that’s one of it. The second piece would be landfill space. Landfills are a limited resource. It’s very challenging to site a new landfill and we’re trying to make our infrastructure at Lane County last as long as possible.

D. Miller: Where does solid waste in Lane County go right now?

Hurley: So we have a publicly-owned landfill, it’s called the Short Mountain Landfill. We operate 15 transfer stations around the county and all of that waste comes centrally to that landfill, which is located just south of Eugene.

D. Miller: How much more space do you have there?

Hurley: So we’re pretty fortunate that we do have quite a bit of space left at the landfill. We have about 70 years. But by starting this project and diverting the waste that doesn’t need to be landfilled, we’ll be able to extend the life of the landfill by about 20 years.

D. Miller: So getting to nearly 100 years of running time there?

Hurley: Yes, and that’s very unique actually. Our neighbors to the north and south, there are landfills there that are expected to close probably in the next 15 years. So, we’re fortunate to have this resource and we just want to make it last as long as possible for the community.

D. Miller: Steve, as I mentioned, the county is calling this the most technologically advanced waste processing facility in the country. What does that mean?

S. Miller: Well, I think when you look at diversion of waste, recovery of things that have value from it, and then the use of the organic matter to then create biogas and create a renewable natural gas – all of these things have been done in other places, but not in any one place. So we’re bringing this technology that we’ve deployed in other regions into one location. And, of course, we’re also using the latest techniques which include spectral imaging to identify materials. We use AI, robotics, other ways to advance the process.

D. Miller: Well, let’s hear more about that. My understanding is there’s gonna be two big sets of sorts going on, one for garbage and one for recycling. So let’s take them one by one. What exactly is going to be sorted in the garbage part?

S. Miller: Effectively, there are a few different elements. Plastics of different types – PET bottles, water bottles, milk jugs, polypropylene, yogurt cups, plastic bags, things of that nature – that now go into the waste stream, some of those items are targeted for segregated recycling. But not everything gets into the right bin and so we see it in the trash. We also have metals, both ferrous and nonferrous metals. Then we have the organic waste. And the organic waste is that thing that, once you take away oxygen, it emits a gas that’s rich in methane. That’s the methane that Dan had referred to earlier. In our case, we’re putting that in a controlled environment, and extracting both the methane and the CO2 before that material then goes to landfill.

D. Miller: Am I right, in assuming from what you’re saying, that part of the solution here is necessary … all the sorting, because some stuff that shouldn’t be thrown away in the first place – recyclable plastics, for example, or recyclable metals – it’s ending up in people’s trash bins?

S. Miller: That’s part of it. But there’s also a part of the community that doesn’t get recycling services, like multifamily housing. And you have different parts of the commercial sector as well. But then you have the organic waste. Most of the material that does go into the landfill, and now will be coming into our site, is supposed to be there. We’re simply processing it in a different way to extract the value from it.

D. Miller: You mentioned spectral imaging and artificial intelligence. What’s spectral imaging?

S. Miller: It’s a way of identifying materials according to their molecular content. So we make equipment called optical sorters. We put a light on material, moving at a very high speed, 10 feet per second. We read the light wave that is emitted from it, and we can tell what the makeup of that material is according to its molecular content. And then for items that we want to target, we use a blast of air to extract it, and that’s a technology that’s been in existence for some time.

D. Miller: Dan, as Steve mentioned, the majority of the waste that’s being handled right now is organic waste. Is there any municipal composting in Lane County right now? I mean, can people put food waste or yard waste in a dedicated bin?

Hurley: Yes, we have a pretty robust composting infrastructure here in Lane County and services offered for people that live in the Eugene-Springfield area, where they can put food waste into their yard debris bin and then that can go off for commercial composting. We also have a lot of programs to encourage residential composting. We have a partnership with BRING Recycling, and we teach a lot about recycling and composting. But despite all that effort, food waste remains the largest segment of our waste. And nationally, food waste makes up about 24% of waste.

So the problem with food waste is the way it breaks down in a landfill is different than when it breaks down in composting. When that food waste goes into a landfill, it breaks down anaerobically and produces methane. And we do have some systems in place to capture methane at the landfill, but it’s not a very efficient system. So we’re looking forward to launching this new technology that will be able to take that food waste out of the waste stream before it goes to the landfill and put it in what’s called an anaerobic digester, so that it allows that food waste to break down like it would in the landfill. But it captures that methane so that we can use that as a renewable fuel.

D. Miller: Steve, what’s the market for the energy you hope to be producing?

S. Miller: Well, there really are two markets. First, the gas itself is rich in methane. When we extract it, we have roughly 55% to 60% methane and the balance being CO2. We take that gas, we strip out the CO2 and we make a natural gas product that is equal to or better than fossil fuel derived natural gas. And we’ll inject that into the Northwest Natural pipeline, blended with fossil fuel gas. Often, that’s referred to as renewable natural gas or RNG.

The other product is the CO2. After we strip that out, we then go through a process to liquefy it. That liquefied CO2 is being sold to a local company, a Springfield-based company that uses that for industrial uses around the state.

D. Miller: I’m curious, Steve – as you were describing it, it seems like one of the exciting tech technological pieces here is the ability of your robots, with AI and spectral imaging, to identify all these different components in the stream and put them where they need to go, whether it’s recyclable materials or food waste that can go into the digester, or the rest of the trash that has to go into the landfill. I’m wondering if, given that technology, why not just have everything go into one bin and then just have one huge place where these machines sort everything from one giant pile?

S. Miller: Well, that’s a good question. There are communities that do just what you’re describing. We build systems in a variety of places around the world that do just that. I will say that, even though all of our plastic generated from a municipal waste system of this type go to the same markets as the material from a segregated system, the material from a segregated system is cleaner and does have more value. But …

D. Miller: Cleaner, meaning there isn’t leftover chili sticking to the plastic?

S. Miller: Correct. Yeah, one of the things our company also does is build plastic processing facilities. So our systems receive the material that we’re talking about. And regardless of the source, it all gets clean, processed into a new plastic that can then be reused, either to go into a bottle or for other uses. So it all ends up the same. It all gets recovered in that same way. But you’re right, you don’t have that … there is some amount of organic matter that sticks to the material.

D. Miller: We got this question on Facebook, Dan, that I’d like to run by you. Betty Vail wrote this: she said that she’s “curious why garbage collection companies were opposed to this and why their concerns were dismissed.” Were garbage collection companies or others opposed to this project?

Hurley: Yes, it’s true. Garbage haulers have been opposed to this project and they have reached out to their customers. Part of it is that we do need to raise garbage rates to support this project. With the federal tax incentives coming into this project and the private investment coming into this project, we’ve been able to keep those impacts to ratepayers pretty low. So for the average residential customer, having a sort of a medium size can with every other week pick up, we’re talking about a $2 to $2.50 increase four years from now, that we’re gonna phase in over four years of increases. So over this next year, they’re looking at about a 50 cent per month increase. So we do feel like we have kept that low.

But I think the bigger issue really at play with the garbage haulers is that this new facility will introduce competition into the system. Right now, all of the recyclables that are collected in the Eugene-Springfield area are transported by a private hauling company up to the Portland area. They’re processed in material recovery facilities up there. And there is some new legislation that people may not know about, called the Modernization of Recycling Act, that will implement a small fee on all packaged goods that are sold in Oregon. And the money that is generated through that system will go to support facilities that are processing the recycling. So if there’s a local option here in Eugene-Springfield, that money won’t then flow to those material recovery facilities there outside of our county.

D. Miller: Dan, how will you decide if all of this is working, if all of this has been worth it? What are the metrics that you will be looking for? And what do you think the public should be paying attention to?

Hurley: So the metrics will be the amount of material that we divert. Currently we have about a 52% recovery rate. Of all the waste that’s generated in Lane County, we recover about 52% of that. We set a goal to reach a 63% recovery rate several years ago, as part of that Modernization of Recycling Act. And this project will actually get us above 70%. So monitoring our recovery rate will be one metric. Then looking at the actual tonnage that gets diverted and the actual amount of renewable gas that’s produced. And that that is a correlation to how much methane is reduced from being emitted from the landfill. So we’ll be looking at the tons of materials that come out of this diversion program and the added life that we add to our landfill through that savings.

D. Miller: Will all of that be publicly available?

Hurley: That will be publicly available. This is a public-private partnership. So all of our records are publicly available and we will be giving regular reports to our board of commissioners to talk about the progress of the project.

D. Miller: Steve Miller, when do you plan to have all of this fully operational?

S. Miller: At this moment, we’re looking at the second quarter of 2026. Somewhere between the second and the third quarter, we’ll have everything running and in full operation.

D. Miller: Steve Miller and Dan Hurley, thanks very much.

Hurley: Thanks so much for having us.

S. Miller: Yes, thank you.

D. Miller: Steve Miller is the CEO of Bulk Handling Systems. Dan Hurley is the director of Lane County Public Works. They joined us to talk about the new waste processing facility that’s coming to Lane County in something like a year-and-a-half.

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