Georgia-Pacific (GP), Atlanta, has begun operations at its GP Toledo material recovery facility (MRF) in Toledo, Oregon. The MRF has applied GP’s Juno technology, which is designed to recycle highly contaminated recovered fiber and mixed materials.

Christer Henriksson, president of Juno Technology at Georgia-Pacific, says GP has been piloting Juno since 2013 at a plant in Savannah, Georgia, and began construction on its Toledo MRF about two years ago.

“The pilot plant was used to prove our concept of recycling municipal solid waste, typically called MSW,” he says. “That MSW goes to landfills today. We have tested hundreds of different kinds of MSW—airport waste, Class A office building waste, theme park waste, sports stadium waste. It was about understanding the different kinds of waste materials. The lessons learned from the pilot plant allowed us to find necessary patents for Juno technology and to design and scale-up a commercial plant in Toledo.”

Henriksson says construction was going on in the middle of the pandemic, which he adds wasn’t easy. Forest fires on the West Coast also made startup a little difficult. Despite the challenges, he says construction finished on time in the spring of 2021.

As of May, the Toledo MRF has been up and running, processing commercial MSW from accounts throughout Oregon. Henriksson says the plant has the capacity to process about 100,000 tons of material per year and has the potential to recycle up to 90 percent of all material that comes into the MRF.

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