The Southeastern Public Service Authority, which handles waste management for eight Hampton Roads localities, including Isle of Wight County, is looking to use artificial intelligence to keep recyclable items out of its landfill.

SPSA solicited proposals last year from companies looking to fill the void from last year’s closure of the WIN Waste, formerly Wheelabrator, waste-to-energy plant that in its heyday diverted more than 70% of the region’s trash from the landfill in Suffolk. SPSA estimates the landfill will be filled to capacity by 2060 if the volume of waste now entering it annually remains unchanged.

SPSA’s Board of Directors voted in February to enter negotiations with Commonwealth Sortation, a subsidiary of Colorado-based AMP, which has an existing facility in Portsmouth that uses AI-powered trash-sorting robots able to rapidly filter recyclables and organic material from waste as it travels via conveyor belt.

SPSA Executive Director Dennis Bagley, who spoke to Isle of Wight County supervisors on May 1, said an average 506,000 tons of waste per year from the eight localities goes into the 833-acre landfill. Its first four “cells,” which refer to the pits where waste is interred, are already full and have been closed for more than a decade. Cells five and six, he said, are close to capacity and a seventh is permitted. As part of the permitting process with the state’s Wetlands Board for cells eight and nine, which Bagley said would impact 109 acres of wetlands, SPSA agreed to give up the rights to develop cells 10 through 12 on its master plan. That means that once cells eight and nine fill up in just under 40 years, there will be no other option for the region’s waste other than paying a premium to ship it to a private landfill, Bagley said.

Smithfield ended its curbside recycling contract with Bay Disposal in 2021, citing a shift in world markets from China’s 2017 decision to stop accepting recyclables that taxpayer-funded American curbside collection programs had previously shipped overseas for processing. The town further contended most of what was being collected was being incinerated at WIN Waste rather than repurposed. Isle of Wight also stopped recycling plastic, paper and glass at its eight municipal refuse and recycling centers in 2022, contending only cardboard, steel and aluminum remained cost-effective.

Some of SPSA’s members, such as Suffolk, continue to operate curbside recycling collection programs, but “conventional recycling costs are continuing to rise,” Bagley said, “and some of your counterparts are paying as much as $750 a ton to recycle, and they’re getting about 6.8% of their waste being recycled. That’s not a very good return on your investment.”

Part of the problem, Bagley said, is that some people in Hampton Roads’ larger cities with curbside recycling throw everything in the trash rather than using the blue or green city-issued recycling cans. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality requires SPSA to recycle at least 25% of its waste. According to a report by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, the region’s recycling rate fell from an average 35% for 2010 through 2022 to just above the minimum at 25.8% in 2023.

Using AI, Bagley said, helps solve the economics of recycling by taking people out of the equation.

At a traditional recycling plant, “you may have 20 to 25 people in a line overtop of the waste to try to sort it,” Bagley said. “Robotics and AI allow you to do away with all those jobs. … Those are jobs that nobody really wants, and what’s happened in the recycling market is it’s hard to find people to fill those jobs. So if you’ve got a job and there’s nobody in it, when the waste goes past it, whatever they were going to pull out doesn’t get pulled out by that person, so your numbers continue to go down. Robots, they don’t have a bad day. They don’t get sick. They work every day.”

Bagley said robots can separate tens of thousands more recyclables from a waste stream than humans. Using trash-sorting AI would also eliminate the need for people to throw recyclables into a separate blue or green can.

 

A $100 million investment

Per the terms of SPSA’s draft agreement with Commonwealth Sortation, Bagley said the company would “guarantee diversion” of at least 50% of the region’s waste from entering the landfill. Commonwealth Sortation’s proposal includes a component that removes organic material such as food scraps, which Bagley said accounts for roughly 40% of the regional waste stream, and would repurpose that material as “biochar,” a carbon-based soil additive used in farming.

“It would increase the regional landfill life and provide disposal capacity through the end of the century,” Bagley said.

But all this comes with a cost. Bagley said Commonwealth Sortation’s proposal would reflect an investment of over $100 million in the region, and that a final contract with SPSA would require a 20-year commitment by SPSA’s localities to remain members.

SPSA’s support and use agreements with its member localities will automatically renew on June 30, 2027, unless a locality gives the required 18-month withdrawal notice. The contracts would typically renew for 10 years, but this time, due to the ongoing talks with Commonwealth Sortation, SPSA is looking for a 20-year commitment.

“It doesn’t say you’re going to use alternative waste disposal. All that says is that we’re going to continue using the same disposal mechanism that we are currently using for 20 years instead of 10 years,” Bagley said.

Once those 20-year commitments are in place, only then could a final contract with Commonwealth Sortation be presented to SPSA’s 16-member Board of Directors, which is composed of eight governor-appointed members and another eight members appointed by their respective localities. Dale Baugh and County Administrator Randy Keaton currently serve as Isle of Wight’s representatives.

Any contract with Commonwealth Sortation or change in SPSA’s standard operating procedures would require a 75% supermajority vote to pass, Bagley said.

Bagley said SPSA is considering two options for passing the cost of contracting with Commonwealth Sortation onto its member localities.

One would entail each member locality paying the same tipping fee, and receiving the same services, as every other SPSA member

“The other option would be one rate for alternative waste disposal, a second rate for landfilling. We’re still in the process of putting all of those numbers together,” Bagley said.

Currently member localities pay $65 per ton to have their waste hauled to the landfill. Bagley said even without the alternative waste solution proposed by Commonwealth Sortation, that tipping fee is expected to rise to $70 over the next five years.

With the alternative waste disposal, tipping fees would need to increase to $88 per ton by the 2028-29 fiscal year and to $90 by fiscal year 2032-33, Bagley said.

While landfilling is the cheapest short-term solution, SPSA’s engineering consultants have projected that if and when space is depleted in the landfill, disposal costs could exceed $125 per ton.

“It’s kind of like pay me now, pay me later,” Bagley said. “… If you don’t have landfill space you’re at the mercy of those who do have landfill space. We’re in a position right now where landfills know that we can’t take all the waste to the regional landfill because of the amount of capacity we currently have, so we’ve seen a $6 increase in tip fees from the landfills over the past three years. When we don’t have any landfill space you can kind of imagine what’s going to happen.”

Keaton said Isle of Wight’s waste, due to the county being at the western edge of SPSA’s territory, is currently being hauled to the Atlantic Waste Disposal landfill in Sussex County rather than SPSA’s Suffolk landfill. It may be more cost-effective for Isle of Wight to continue doing so rather than commit to participating in Commonwealth Sortation’s solution, Keaton said.

Isle of Wight, the city of Franklin and Southampton County collectively account for “only about 8% of the total waste stream for the region,” Keaton said.

Keaton said Isle of Wight also currently receives “a premium price” for the cardboard and metal it collects at its refuse and recycling centers. Participating in Commonwealth Sortation’s solution would not prohibit Isle of Wight from maintaining its cardboard and metal recycling programs, Bagley said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Dennis Bagley’s name. It is Bagley, not Bailey.