Commitment in Circular Services now reaches nearly a billion dollars, building on investments from Brookfield, as well as from the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund and the Partnership Fund for New York City, marking a significant milestone in the transition to the circular economy, as more institutional and corporate capital is catalyzed to advance circularity at scale.
Circular Services is the largest privately held recycling company in the United States, focusing on a wide range of recycled commodities across packaging, organics, textiles and electronics. It owns and operates facilities across the U.S. and seeks to help municipalities and businesses eliminate the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on landfill disposal costs by ensuring that valuable commodities are recycled and reused in domestic supply chains. The companies investing in Circular Services, each one committed to advancing the circular economy, are collectively demonstrating the power of both collaboration and targeted investments to accelerate the transition from a linear to a circular economy.
According to Esi Eggleston Bracey, President of Unilever USA, “Scaling best-in-class circular infrastructure can help increase the supply of recycled plastic, which is key to making circular supply chains a reality. Our investment in Circular Services is an important step in increasing the feedstock needed to achieve Unilever’s 2025 plastics goals for recycled content in our packaging and our goal to collect and process more plastic packaging than we produce. These types of investments are critical for addressing plastic waste, which will take action from all of us across industries.”
Michael Kobori, chief sustainability officer at Starbucks adds, “Now is the time for bold action to transform the recycling infrastructure in the U.S. Starbucks is excited to join with Microsoft, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SK Group, Unilever, Brookfield and the Partnership Fund for New York City to help generate nearly a billion dollar investment in Circular Services. This builds upon our long-standing work with Closed Loop Partners, whose NextGen Consortium has made significant strides in advancing sustainable packaging, including bringing hot cup recycling to more communities.”
Circular Services’ focus on packaging as a key material for recovery is spurred by a growing need to increase recovery rates for packaging. Currently, recovery rates for packaging and food-service plastics are reported to be as low as 28% in the United States.
“To create a world where packaging never ends up in landfill or as litter, recycling capabilities must evolve, and investing in the infrastructure and circular systems that can help collect, sort, reuse and recycle is a critical step,” said Molly Fogarty, Head of Sustainability, Corporate & Government Affairs, Nestlé North America. “This investment will help upgrade recycling infrastructure in the U.S. and expand the availability of recycled content, as well as bolster packaging materials collection. We’re excited to work alongside other leading companies to advance Circular Services and help chart a path to a circular economy.”
In addition to the focus on packaging recovery, companies investing in Circular Services are bolstering efforts to recover electronic waste, one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world. Today, over six billion mobile phones alone are circulating in the global economy. Yet, less than 20% of electronics broadly are collected, refurbished or recycled worldwide––translating to a lost value of more than $50 billion each year.
“With our third investment in the Closed Loop Partners ecosystem we look forward to being part of this new venture to build circular systems that can help our industry achieve our sustainability goals,” said Brandon Middaugh, senior director, Climate Innovation Fund at Microsoft. “We have begun testing ewaste recycling in Denver with Circular Services and look forward to exploring additional areas of potential collaboration.”
