Supply chain challenges force Waste Loop to pause glass recycling in Leavenworth

LEAVENWORTH—Waste Loop suspended its glass recycling drop-off services at the Leavenworth Recycling Center on Sept. 7 due to supply chain challenges with the glass recycling processor, Strategic Materials, Inc. (SMI).

SMI, which had been accepting the region’s recycled glass, announced a curtailment that has impacted glass recycling across Washington, including major areas such as Tacoma and Skagit County.

Waste Loop started hauling glass to SMI in 2020, and its numbers have increased every year. Waste Loop Executive Director Ariahna Jones said her team had been hauling three to four tons of glass to SMI about every three weeks prior to SMI’s Aug. 26 curtailment.

“SMI’s key end market customer for recycled cullet in Seattle recently ceased operations effective July 1st, 2024. Although SMI has developed a pipeline of alternative customer outlets over the last couple of years, this latest announcement put further pressure on us to move cullet to customers and markets both near and far away,” the company said in a letter to its uncontracted suppliers.

SMI had sold cullet, or recycled broken glass, to the packaging company Ardagh Group, which had indefinitely curtailed operations at its Seattle glass bottle manufacturing plant. The manufacturer said the cuts were a “result of ongoing pressure from low-priced imports from China, Chile and Mexico, and market conditions,” according to Packaging Dive reporting.

“It has been an ongoing challenge of being able to really find efficiencies for hauling and to keep it sustainable. And then this piece with Strategic Materials, having to halt being able to collect glass really just put a nail in the coffin…Everyone's still trying to scramble,” said Jones.

Waste Loop looked into hauling glass to Pasco as part of BIG Recyclers’ hub and spoke model, which collects glass from rural areas and takes it to glass recycling processors. However, the facility is currently unable to accept glass from out of the area, said Jones. Aside from SMI in Seattle, the nearest large glass recycling processors are O-I in Kalama, WA, and Glass to Glass in Portland, OR.

“We're trying to identify ways that we can increase our hauling efficiencies, so being able to collect more at one location and haul more…Particularly if we're hauling from to a location that's further away than Seattle,” said Jones.

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media