The organization that handles trash for the south side of Hampton Roads is finalizing a long-term contract to boost recycling and cut the amount of waste clogging the local landfill.
After a yearlong bidding process, the Southeastern Public Service Authority recently chose a new vendor called Commonwealth Sortation to dispose of the region’s garbage for at least the next two decades.
It’s a partnership between Colorado-based AMP Robotics Corp. and Recycling and Disposal Solutions of Virginia, which has operated a traditional recycling plant in Portsmouth since 2004.
The company uses artificial intelligence to retrieve recyclable materials directly from the trash stream, plus turn organic materials such as food waste into a reusable charcoal-like substance.
Commonwealth Sortation’s contract with SPSA is still pending negotiations that officials hope to wrap up later this spring.
It’s the latest chapter in SPSA’s ongoing effort to extend the life of the Regional Landfill in Suffolk, which in its current form is projected to run out of space by late next year.
“We knew there (were) a lot of items that were going in the landfill that could be recycled and something else done with it,” said Dennis Bagley, executive director of SPSA. “So we started pursuing this.”
The authority handles trash for Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Franklin and the counties of Southampton and Isle of Wight.
For decades, most of that was burned for steam energy at a plant in Portsmouth, formerly known as Wheelabrator. But the plant closed last year, sending thousands of extra tons of trash to the landfill daily.
SPSA solicited bids for a new vendor that could offer a more innovative method of waste disposal.
Plenty of trash will still end up in the landfill, and the authority’s already working on an expansion to extend its capacity through 2060.
But Bagley said the goal is for Commonwealth Sortation to help cut waste to the landfill in half, which would allow Hampton Roads to use it through the end of this century.
The change could have ripple effects on how local governments choose to recycle in the future, such as eliminating separate blue bins altogether.
“Eventually the goal would be to have one source to take all the waste,” Bagley said.
How the new system works
AMP Robotics is already operating in Hampton Roads, at a much smaller scale than it will under the new SPSA contract.
The company teamed up with RDS of Virginia last summer to open a pilot AI-based waste plant in Portsmouth, next door to the recycler’s existing facility.
Joe Benedetto, RDS’ owner, said they’ve found that the AI system can identify and remove recyclable particles as small as about three inches.
“Be it paper or half of a plastic container or something like that, it can be removed with the AI system, where a lot of times those particles get lost,” Benedetto said. “So I think it’s a much more efficient process and that’s very exciting to have a higher percentage of recyclable recovery.”
Here’s how it works: Trash gets dumped inside the facility and shuffled onto a series of conveyor belts.
As it moves through, the equipment runs the garbage through several layers of sorting, including cameras that quickly identify items’ size and material. Then the junk gets blasted by air jets.
“We're creating a garbage waterfall,” said Matanya Horowitz, AMP’s founder and chief technology officer. “We have little air jets behind the garbage waterfall, and they just poke out the stuff they want.”
The system can be programmed to target specific products – maybe officials want to set it up to retrieve red plastic, for example, for a customer who wants it.
The company expects up to 20% of incoming waste to be recyclable material that ends up in people’s regular trash bins. Another 40% is organic material such as food scraps and yard clippings.
Andrew Trump, AMP’s director of project development, said they propose using a system called a biochar kiln to deal with organics.
“What we’re doing essentially is indirectly heating the organic material,” he said.
The resulting substance, called biochar, stores carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, and can be used as a substitute in making concrete or to top the landfill to control odor.
The remaining trash will keep going to the landfill.
Commonwealth Sortation plans to invest at least $100 million in expanding the existing pilot facility, as well as building a new one down the road at the site of the former Wheelabrator plant. SPSA owns an easement for that land.
Bagley said if the deal moves forward, local officials may realize they can save money by not paying separately to collect and transport trash and recycling.
“From an economics standpoint, it doesn't make sense to have citizens recycling in a blue bin and send them to this contractor, and then taking everything else and sending it over to this other contractor,” he said.
Cities “could continue to do that, and this system would still work. But what makes more sense for member communities and the public is to have all the waste go to one place, and it gets sorted at a much lower cost.”
Getting local governments on board
When SPSA inks the new contract, the organization will have to promise the company at least 20 years of waste that can fuel the system.
In order to do that, the authority needs its member localities to commit for the same length of time.
Bagley is now going to each city and county to urge them to renew long-term use and support agreements.
The agreements last 10 years and are set to automatically renew in 2027. SPSA wants to double the commitment period through the 2040s.
At a SPSA board meeting this week, some local officials expressed concerns that smaller localities in Western Tidewater could be more hesitant to commit to 20-year agreements with higher tipping fees.
“There is an element of what we're doing with the Commonwealth Sortation, if that contract goes through, and how that will impact the western communities,” said LJ Hansen, director of public works in Virginia Beach.
“I don't want to gloss over that. Reasonably so, they're going to have some concerns, and the eastern communities, likewise, are going to have some concerns about how that might affect us,” Hansen said.
Bagley acknowledged communities will have to pay more, but said they’ll be gaining additional services.
In the meantime, SPSA is finalizing environmental permitting to expand the Regional Landfill into two additional cells, as well as working with the Nansemond Indian Nation to address potential impacts to the tribe’s traditional cultural property.
After those cells are full, “you can put a bow on the landfill,” Bagley said. There’ll be nowhere else to expand without touching protected wetlands – which is why another solution’s needed.
