Winter 2025: From Pilot to Pivot, A Focus on Aluminum ☃️
It’s been a big season for Resin. We wrapped up our pilot, decided to narrow our focus to aluminum, and hosted a webinar breaking down the state of recycling according to the EPA. If you missed it, catch the full recording here to learn how the EPA sets recycling goals, breaks them down into key challenges, and outlines the necessary investments to meet our targets.
🚀 Final Pilot Results
Our pilot set out to answer a simple yet critical question: Will people actually use our platform? With a 60%+ return customer rate, 274,000 pieces of packaging recycled, and 320 visitors, the answer is a clear YES. Our pilot proved that our new model of collecting recyclables works, and the experience successfully drives behavioral change.
We also learned how to build hardware people actually use. Hardware is hard as the old mantra goes, we’re taking a slow and small approach to iteration on our equipment design. A good rule of thumb is that fixing hardware problems in the field is 50% more expensive than fixing them during manufacturing. We iterated constantly on the station’s equipment through the pilot, deliberately testing, learning, and refining before scaling up.
Our final trip to the pilot station was bittersweet. The building will soon be torn down by IDOT, but it’s a powerful reminder of how far we’ve come.
🔄 Big News: We’re Going All-In on Aluminum Recycling
We’ve made the decision to focus exclusively on aluminum recycling. Here’s why:
Challenges with Plastic Recycling
High Processing Costs: Processing plastic to optimize storage and transport is costly, exceeding the revenue we could get from even premium-grade plastics.
Contamination Issues: In our pilot >90% of contamination stemmed from confusion over plastics. Unlike aluminum, plastics come in a variety of resins, dyes, coatings, and labels, complicating recyclability.
Why Aluminum?
Recycling Rates Are Alarmingly Low: In Illinois, only 22% of aluminum cans get recycled. Nationally, it’s just 43%—a sharp decline from the 52% average in 1990. Clearly, something isn’t working.
It’s Infinitely Recyclable: Unlike some other materials, aluminum can be recycled forever without losing quality. That means every can collected is a can saved from the landfill and put back into circulation.
It’s Fast & Efficient: An aluminum can dropped into one of our stations today can be recycled into a new can in just 60 days.
Undeniable Economics: People are skeptical about recycling for good reason. In most cases, using recycled material costs more than producing virgin. Aluminum is a big exception. Recycling aluminum is far cheaper and more efficient than mining raw materials. It saves 95% of the energy required to produce new aluminum.
🎓 Learning & Sharing: What’s Next for Recycling?
We were proud to sponsor Second Nature's Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit. At the conference, we learned about how sustainability professionals in higher ed approach making big lasting impact at their institutions and learned that student involvement is one of the most crucial drivers of sustainability change. Our product aligns perfectly with these efforts, as it provides an accessible, inclusive pathway to learning more about campus sustainability efforts. We also drive engagement by helping student groups fundraise and offers personalized feedback on their recycling efforts. We left the conference with some great new connections to collaborate with.
🔧 Technical Spotlight: Solar Integration
This was my first experience working with a solar-powered system, and now we’re relying on it to power our self-contained recycling stations. We designed a system where form meets function, with solar panels serving as both an energy source and a protective awning for customers.
A solar system has three key components:
Inverter – Converts DC solar energy to AC power. We sized ours based on peak electrical load, listing all equipment and prioritizing what must run when a customer interacts with the station. Smart software ensures non-essential systems (like HVAC) turn off when recycling equipment is in use.
Panels – Sized for daily power needs. Using pilot data, we calculated our max daily energy usage, added a 20% safety buffer, and factored in Illinois’ 2.7 winter sunlight hours (🫠) per day. With limited roof space on a 20ft container, we aimed to generate a full day's power:
Daily usage ÷ sunlight hours = required panel output.
Battery – Determines backup capacity. We didn’t want to tempt a Chicago Winter into a long, devastating stretch of gray so we built in several days of reserve power. If needed, we can fall back on a generator.
