Balcones Recycling has opened a new materials recovery facility in San Antonio meant to process both residential and commercial single-stream material. The project “represents a $68 million investment in San Antonio recycling,” according to a news release.
Balcones built the 145,000-square-foot facility in anticipation of starting a 15-year municipal recycling contract with the city. The contract, first awarded in April 2022, is set to begin on Aug. 1. The company celebrated the facility’s opening last week.
The 50-ton-per-hour system from CP Group has a fully automated container line, which Balcones says makes the facility “the most automated in the country.” The system also is designed to be able to sort hard-to-recycle materials like film and flexible plastics, the company said in a news release. Recovered recyclable materials will be marketed in North America, it said.
The facility features numerous optical sorters set on different parts of the fiber and container lines, as well as AI-equipped units meant for quality control, CP Group said in a 2022 announcement. KDW designed and built the building.
Balcones worked with San Antonio to design the facility to help the city meet and exceed its diversion goals, President Adam Vehik said in a statement. San Antonio, which serves about 356,000 residential single-family households, aims to reach a 60% recycling rate by 2025. The new facility is meant to “serve the community as environmental stewards for many years,” he said.
The San Antonio MRF is Balcones Recycling’s fourth facility in Texas. Balcones, one of the largest privately held recycling companies in the U.S., is a business unit of Circular Services, a company of Closed Loop Partners that launched in 2022 with plans to offer a range of recycling services.
“Balcones Recycling plays an important role in achieving Circular Services’ mission to provide more communities and companies with solutions to reduce dependence on extraction and landfill,” said Jessica Long, chief strategy officer of Circular Services and Closed Loop Partners, in a statement. “The opening of the San Antonio facility is a milestone for advancing circular economy infrastructure in the country.”
Balcones Recycling is a product of the merger between Balcones Resources and Sims Municipal Recycling, both owned by Closed Loop, which took place in November. The company now operates in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida and Illinois.
The company says it will create about 70 new jobs to operate the facility, which will also have an education and outreach hub that will offer tours, workshops and other programming “to raise awareness about the importance of recycling and serve as a community resource,” according to the release. “Our goal is to deliver a recycling campus that is without peer anywhere in the country,” Vehik said. “This facility is living proof of our commitment to that goal.”
