How do you recycle plastic waste? Tucson is working to turn it into building blocks

A pilot program that turns unrecyclable plastic waste into multicolored building blocks is growing citywide in Tucson.

Mayor Regina Romero and the City Council approved a four-year service agreement May 9 with ByFusion, a Los Angeles-based company that converts plastic waste into construction material. The partnership will advance Tucson's goals to "move past the traditional landfill model and into an era of regenerative waste-to-asset activities," the agreement said.

ByFusion started partnering with Tucson's Ward 6 about 10 months ago to collect and transform unrecyclable plastics. The waste is collected in a bright orange 22 cubic-yard container at the back of the building, then picked up by the city's Environmental Services trucks and emptied at Tank's Speedway Recycling and Landfill. There, Tank's bales the waste into 12-ton loads and ships it to California so ByFusion can turn it into blocks.

ByFusion will now build the blocks in Tucson. The city signed a $1 million contract and will pay $2.4 million extra to build a facility at Los Reales Sustainability Campus, where the company will operate a Blocker machine, called a Micro Diversion Platform.

Though for now, the plastic must be left at city drop-off sites, the company is considering offering curbside pickup services to residents, too. All the hard-to-recycle plastic waste, numbered 3 through 7, which can't go into the blue bin, can be deposited there. Styrofoam is not included in the list.

Because of the pilot's program success, the city added two more drop-off sites at the Ward 4 office at 8123 E Poinciana Drive, and Fire Station 15, at 2002 S Mission Road. The three sites will continue to receive residents' unrecyclable plastics, along with the Los Reales facility once the blocker machine arrives.

The blocker could be up and running before Christmas, said Steve Kozachik, Tucson's vice mayor and Ward 6 councilmember.

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Community participation made it happen

Kozachik launched a new recycling program a few years back for crushed glass at the back of the Ward 6 office. The program grew into a community-wide glass collection program. A constituent who became involved asked if he'd considered working with unrecyclable plastics too.

"Everything in the waste stream is a potential resource, it just has to find the right niche at the right price at the right time to become useful," said Val Little, a Ward 6 resident and chairwoman of Tucson's Groundwater Advisory Council.

She had followed recycling initiatives and news for years, and when she read about ByFusion she decided to pitch the idea to Kozachik. It was common-sense technology that was right up Tucson's alley, she said. The results from the pilot ended up showing it, too.

The pilot program began in August 2022 with the goal of collecting 20 tons of waste and getting 500 signatures of support from constituents. By early December they had collected 35 tons and collected about 1,000 signatures.

When they looked at the zip codes of people who signed in support, every single zip code in Pima County was represented, Kozachik said.

"That means that people are driving in from Oro Valley, from Marana, from Green Valley, unincorporated Pima County, the top of Mount Lemmon," he said.

"The point was made. We demonstrated to the city environmental resources folks that the community really wants this."

In total, the city has collected over 90 tons from the three locations. The council vote on the agreement was unanimous.

"It just has clicked with the community, not only with the constituents but with staff within environmental services and other departments that are impacted too," Little said.

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Why some people make the effort to recycle

On a recent morning, Jeremy Bower rolled a 32-gallon trash can to the container at the back of the Ward 6 office. A couple of days back he'd read about the program going citywide, so he started sorting and storing his plastics right away and made the drive to drop it off.

In the span of 20 minutes, eight other cars pulled over to drop off bags.

"Obviously we have to make the effort to come here but it's worth it to me," Jennifer Tuttle said. "You do not realize how much (plastic) waste you have. I feel really good about making something more productive out of it. I love it."

She doesn't care too much about having a curbside pickup service but believes it will increase compliance and participation.

Manny Carrillo drives 10 miles to drop off all kinds of recyclables at Ward 6. Because he lives out of the city service area, he used to pay a company to pick up his garbage and recyclable waste. He said he started taking it to Ward 6 after a truck driver told him: "You guys are paying for recycling but it's not actually being recycled it's going straight to the landfill." He still does this every week to keep his wife happy, he said.

Because participation has been so good, Tank's Speedway Recycling and Landfill has received about 95 tons of bread bags, coffee lids, single-use bags, bubble wrap and snack packing, among other plastics that do not go in the blue bin. They have baled and shipped about 20 tons to Los Angeles so ByFusion could turn it into 1,200 blocks. The city has built new benches at Himmel Park with them, as well as outdoor planters.

Operations manager Tod Payme said they have five more loads, each made of about 12 more tons of waste compressed and wrapped with wire, ready to go. The rest are still out in the open.

Payme said it is "awesome" the program is detouring the plastics away from the landfill and transforming the materials into new products. Tank's used to receive and sort plastic 1 and 2, PET and HDPE, and cardboard. Then they would send it to a recycling facility. But since China imposed its the National Sword policy, the prices for recycling just crashed.

The loads still at Tank's will be sent to L.A. to make new blocks. Kozachik said the city already has plans for them: to build a perimeter wall at the University of Arizona, expand the Sister José Women's Center, build a tack room at Therapeutic Riding of Tucson, and build new park benches and ramadas.

The Zero Waste group at Sustainable Tucson, a local grassroots nonprofit founded in 2006, said it appreciates the efforts to divert waste from the landfill but hopes the city and Arizona will do more to address the root cause: overproduction and consumption of plastics.

In Arizona, it is still illegal to ban single-use plastics. About a decade ago, Bisbee was threatened with losing $2 million in state tax revenue if it enforced a new ordinance to take plastic bags out of grocery stores.

Kevin Greene, chair of the working group, said they'd like the City of Tucson to work with local businesses and institutions to pilot reusable and refillable container systems and invest in Zero Waste education.

"Unfortunately, the city is placing too much emphasis on researching downstream waste management," Green said. Such solutions create products of less value and don't address the production of trash. "We need to work more on upstream solutions to the plastic problem."

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ByBlock's end use and markets

The micro-diversion platforms, or MDPs, use steam and compression to produce 22-pound blocks. They don't use any additives and they don't have to sort or clean the unrecyclable plastics they get. One of the main challenges of traditional plastic recycling is that contamination with food scraps or other residues can send whole loads to the landfill.

Of the new blocks that come out from Tucson's blocker, ByFusion will give 10% to the city, as per the agreement.

The company plans to develop three revenue streams in Tucson by selling the rest of the blocks into the construction market, offering curbside pickup service to residents, and getting commercial contracts with local companies, shopping centers and business.

Kozachik said he has introduced ByFusion to retailers like Costco, RoadHouse Cinemas, Poly Print and Ace Hardware.

"The real opportunity and value from the standpoint of being able to recruit as much plastic as possible and keep it from being burned or buried is on the commercial side," said Vaughan Stanford, ByFusion's chief revenue officer.

"That's where the biggest impact will be made on the commercial level," Stanford said. "But the residential opportunity is there as well."

Standford said ideally the blocks they produce in Tucson will stay in Tucson. ByBlocks have been used for many outdoor buildings and landscaping, but the company has also promoted them for construction. Standford said one of the end uses is for accessory dwelling units, like a two-bedroom, one-bath house being built in Flagstaff. ByFusion was recently recognized with a sustainability award by the U.S. Building Council of Los Angeles.

Tucson is the first city to land a service agreement with ByFusion, but the company has already worked for two years in the greater Boise area in Idaho providing the same service. The difference is that Tucson is collecting waste through three drop-off points so waste will come in directly to the blocker.

In Boise, ByFusion has partnered with Dow and the Hefty ReNew program, which offers special pickup services to residents so the plastic is turned into blocks. To continue operations in the area, ByFusion signed a service of agreement with Reynolds Consumer Products and Dow on Jan. 9.

The company plans to start pilot projects in other cities too.

"Boise and Tucson are the furthest along, but we're we're anticipating that we'll have probably three more up and three to four more up and running by end of year," he said, declining to disclose the other four agreements.

"The biggest challenge for us is the number of micro-diversion platforms that we have and building to be able to make the blocks."

At some point they could continue to expand beyond Tucson, Standford said.

"The city of Phoenix itself could support multiple MDPs. Tucson can probably even support another MDP once we get off and going. The model for us is basically to land and expand."

Clara Migoya covers environment issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to clara.migoya@arizonarepublic.com.

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Tucson approves new plastic recycling program in zero-waste effort