If you toss something into a blue bin in Hampton Roads, there’s a good chance it ends up at TFC Recycling’s sorting plant in Chesapeake.
The facility has operated in South Norfolk for half a century, first as a buyback center and eventually helping establish the two-bin recycling system around the region.
But several local governments have ditched longstanding curbside programs. A new initiative from the regional waste authority challenges the tradition of blue bins — and TFC’s business.
The program allows households to combine all junk into one bin. The material is then sent to a new plant in Portsmouth, which uses artificial intelligence to extract recyclables from the trash stream.
Michael Benedetto, president and owner of TFC Recycling, is concerned.
“There are many people who hope this technology works, including myself, because it's better for the environment than taking stuff and sending it right to the landfill,” Benedetto said. “However, a two-cart system is better because it keeps commodities that need to be resold clean and dry and marketable.”
The Southeastern Public Service Authority, which handles trash for Hampton Roads’ Southside and Western Tidewater, pursued the program to reduce the amount of waste going to Suffolk’s Regional Landfill, which is otherwise estimated to run out of space by 2060.
Earlier this year, SPSA finalized a $450 million agreement with Colorado-based AMP, which is expanding the Portsmouth plant and plans to build a second facility down the road. AMP also plans to convert organic waste, such as food scraps, into a reusable substance called biochar.
The contract only addresses trash. But officials have touted the new plant as an opportunity to make separate curbside programs moot.
“That became very attractive to our member communities because they were paying exorbitant amounts of money to recycle, and we were going to be able to recycle for less than they were currently recycling,” SPSA executive director Dennis Bagley said earlier this year.
The concept has gained some traction nationwide. Industry experts say mixed-waste sorting using advanced technology can be successful, but is often more expensive because of the need to extensively clean recyclable items.
Portsmouth has been using the one-bin system since late last year. Suffolk recently announced it’s ending its curbside contract with TFC for the SPSA project. Chesapeake ditched curbside recycling in 2022, citing rising costs, and just announced it will also move to the regional initiative.
TFC staff have recently been going door to door in Suffolk, asking residents to sign a petition to save curbside recycling.
The company still holds contracts with Norfolk, Virginia Beach and James City County, among others in Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.
At the Chesapeake facility, material collected from blue bins is shuffled along conveyor belts where workers manually remove non-recyclables, such as pizza boxes smeared with food. Clean materials are baled and sold to manufacturers and paper mills.
Benedetto said the company has invested tens of millions in recent years to improve technology at the plant, including AI-driven sorting units similar to what AMP uses in Portsmouth. Last year, it started accepting plastic-lined paper cups. (Generally, the facility only processes paper, bottles and cans.)
TFC has faced challenges over the past decade, such as a policy change in China that upended the industry. The value of commodities declined, leading to higher costs.
But Benedetto said that fallout has stabilized. He pointed to surveys in Norfolk and Virginia Beach that showed many residents were willing to pay more to keep curbside programs.
“It's one of the most used services and one of the most loved services,” Benedetto said.
SPSA’s contract guarantees AMP will keep at least half of the collected trash from going to the landfill, hopefully extending its capacity through the end of the century. Authority officials also believe the initiative will boost the number of items being successfully recycled.
But Benedetto said contamination is already a problem in the recycling industry – let alone issues that could arise from combining recyclables with trash.
He also noted the Portsmouth plant will not be able to process its full capacity until it completes its building plan over the next few years.
"Children have been taught how to recycle. Now, all of a sudden, this message is different with a system that's not at capacity, that has some questions surrounding it. We do believe that there is a place for that, but it's secondary and should be complementing a two-cart system.”
