Roadmap to Obtaining the Highest Recycling Rate in the UK
December 5, 2024
Juno, our breakthrough waste recovery technology, is able to recover up to 90% of materials it processes, diverting them from landfills and incinerators and helping to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions. With Juno’s successful implementation in Oregon, we’re exploring opportunities to propagate the technology’s positive impacts to other regions far and wide, including the UK.
England’s average annual recycling rate has been flat for more than a decade, hovering at ~41%¹ since 2012 despite national goals of a 60% rate by 2030 and a 65% rate by 2035. Recent news headlines have bemoaned the fact that in the UK, more waste is burned than recycled, while incinerator facilities face increased costs through incoming carbon tax and public pushback, questioning their use as the default alternative to landfilling.
However, local communities are evolving to face these challenges. And we see an opportunity for our innovative Juno® Technology to serve as a potential solution.
How Juno Technology Can Benefit Communities
Georgia-Pacific developed Juno Technology over a 10-year period and launched its first commercial facility in Toledo, Oregon, in May 2021. The benefits of Juno’s advanced waste processing capabilities are striking:
- The diversion rate in Toledo and the surrounding area served by the local waste hauler is now 2.8x what it was prior to Juno’s implementation.
- Juno requires no changes to existing recycling or collection infrastructure.
- The Juno® technology works in municipalities with high or low recycling rates.
Juno has been integrated with a variety of recycling systems.
- The technology has successfully processed a wide range of waste characterizations.
- It has processed both residential and commercial waste.
- Juno has required no changes to collection or source separation.
Organics recycling has been widely adopted in multiple communities in which Juno has been implemented.
In fact, since Juno’s implementation in Toledo, the local diversion rate has nearly tripled, from 23% to 66%.² Furthermore, the 70,000-ton Juno facility has operated at or above its annualized target for nine of the past 10 quarters, with uptime averaging 91.2% since the first quarter of 2022 and rising to 97% in the second quarter of 2024. Clearly, the technology has been needed.
Taking Juno Global
With the proven positive impacts of Juno® Technology in the U.S., we are now initiating a plan to implement our technology in 50-100 new communities around the world. Our focus is on communities where we think Juno can make a significant impact on the recycling rate.
Let’s consider the potential impact on Cumbria County, in northwestern England. The county’s overall recycling rate has been stagnating for nearly a decade, declining from 40% in 2014-2015 to 37% (nearly on a par with Oregon’s 39%) in 2022-2023. In one local council, Barrow-in-Furness, the reality is even more stark – an 18% recycling rate in 2022-2023. The wide range of rates across communities, from that 18% in Barrow to 44% in the South Lakeland District, is similar to rates in the Oregon Juno communities (25%-54%).³
What could a Juno facility do for Cumbria County? According to estimated projections based on Juno Oregon results (low end) and anticipated recovery of future sites with additional sorting equipment (high end), Cumbria’s average recycling rate would rise from 37% to 65-75% within a year of startup if all their municipal waste was processed through Juno.
Juno’s potential positive impacts are especially impressive when comparing the technology’s performance to the results of waste management via landfills. In the UK, Juno could reduce nearly 800 kilograms of CO2e in both a GWP20 and GWP100⁴ scenario for every tonne processed when comparing to landfill and waste to energy. That is a net impact of up to ~570,000 mt of CO2e (GWP20 inclusive of biogenic carbon) or ~280,000 mt CO2e (GWP100 inclusive of biogenic carbon) reduction compared to landfill for a full Juno site, every year!
Learn More
Not only can Juno help reduce CO2e emissions, it can also help communities achieve their waste diversion goals, turning the “un-recyclable” into the reclaimed. Juno facilitates circularity by providing recycled paper, plastics and metals back to the global economy for reuse as raw materials.
For more information on how Juno works, see our new video that showcases the process. For details on how Juno can help meet your community’s needs, reach out today through our contact form.
1 Defra Local Authority collected waste management – annual results 2022-2023, Waste Regulations 2019 targets.
2 Maul, Foster & Alongi Review
3 Defra Local Authority collected waste management – annual results 2022-2023, Waste Regulations 2019 targets
4 The U.S. EPA defines GWP as a measure of how much energy the emissions of one ton of gas will absorb over a given period relative to the emissions of one tonne of carbon dioxide. The most common measures of GWP are the 20-year and 100-year impact, often called “GWP20” and “GWP100”, respectively.