Grantee Research Project Results

Final Report: Digital Verification of Percentage Recycled Content in Individual Products to Advance Plastic Circularity

EPA Contract Number: 68HERC23C0030
Title: Digital Verification of Percentage Recycled Content in Individual Products to Advance Plastic Circularity
Investigators: Robberson, William
Small Business: Kamilo, Inc.
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: December 1, 2022 through May 31, 2023
Project Amount: $99,996
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I (2023) RFA Text |  Recipients Lists
Research Category: SBIR - Air and Climate , SBIR - Homeland Security , SBIR - Water , SBIR - Sustainability

Description:

Claims that products are "made with recycled plastic" are generally the result of corporate self-certification or third-party analog audits of a company's invoices and activities from a previous year.  It is difficult for a regulator or consumer to determine, let alone verify, whether a product which is promoted as "made from recycled content" contains, for example, 20% post-consumer resin (PCR) recycled plastic content or a mere 0.2% recycled plastic content.

Information related to the increased production of plastic polymers and the sale of new products using plastic is readily available, yet there is very little sound data related to the amounts and end dispositions of used or waste plastic. The ability to continuously track the movement of plastic waste through the recycling system and verify the percentage of recycled content in new products will become a regulatory and/or commercial necessity. 

With the support of an earlier EPA SBIR Phase I Program Award (68HERC22C0023), Kamilo was able to research, build and successfully test an innovative geospatial technology platform to continuously track the movement of plastic waste through the recycling system with a first-of-its-kind digital real-time tracking and chain of custody accounting system not previously available. 

Entities across the recycling system agree that plastic circularity demands measurement, traceability, and reporting systems to verify how materials move throughout their lifecycles, especially from waste origination and recovery to next-life and back again to create trust and effective goals and to track progress. 

A method to calculate and provide auditable verification of percentage recycled content in new plastic products has become increasingly urgent - to bring confidence, trust, and validity to product claims.

This research project was supported by the EPA SBIR Program under contract number 68HERC23C0030 and addressed a major challenge in the plastic recycling system - how to calculate and provide immutable and auditable real-time verification of percentage recycled content in new plastic products and thus support the advancement of plastic circularity. 

This SBIR project demonstrated the feasibility of providing crucial components to plastic circularity:

• A first-of-its-kind, 3rd party calculated and verified percentage of recycled plastic content used in each plastic product; and
• The means to present this information on a "percentage recycled content" digital product label - Kamilo TrustMark - for affixing to products made with Kamilo tracked recycled feedstock.

Kamilo's research focused on the following four major areas:

1.       Determining optimal method(s) to calculate and verify percentage recycled content of manufactured products at the item-level;
2.       Determining the key data elements needed from a production facility's automated manufacturing database to be able to perform calculations of percentage recycled content for a designated weight-bounded batch of manufactured products at the item-level;
3.       Determining the feasibility of creating API's (Application Programming Interfaces) to obtain and marry production facility recycled plastic product digital manufacturing data with the same facility's recycled feedstock inventory data collected and managed in Kamilo's geospatial technology platform for supply chain tracking and verification; and
4.       Determining the feasibility and market acceptance of creating and managing a Kamilo TrustMark digital product label or stamp as an outward-facing signal of 3rd party verification of percentage recycled content in a new product.

Figure 1. Illustration of Kamilo's innovative process

Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):

In partnership with a Kamilo client already using our post-consumer recycled plastic feedstock traceability service, we successfully developed and tested an API for real-time data exchange between the client's automated manufacturing database cloud platform and the Kamilo cloud platform. 

A real-time data feed of exact weights from the blenders of both recycled and virgin feedstock entering the injection molds for the products, combined with other key production data elements, enables the ability to calculate on an individual cart basis the percentage recycled content. 

Over the course of the Phase I project, we measured the exact percentage of recycled feedstock going into over two thousand 95-gallon roll-out carts which have been delivered to two of our client's customers in the States of Delaware and Maryland.   These carts have been hot stamped with the Kamilo TrustMark as an outward signal of the client's sustainability. 

Figure 2. Kamilo TrustMark

Conclusions:

The application of a Kamilo TrustMark on a product is dependent upon Kamilo having tracked and verified the source and processing of a manufacturing facility's recycled feedstock for that item.  Thanks to the EPA SBIR program, development of an optimal method to calculate the percentage recycled content in new products and provide a Kamilo Trustmark on those products has been shown to be highly technically feasible.  The development and offer of a TrustMark label to depict verified recycled content in a product has been met with enthusiasm from current and potential customers, and from recent feedback it provides an exciting boost in consumer confidence for the advancement of plastic circularity. 

The plan to commercialize Kamilo's Trustmark works in parallel with our plan to commercialize our traceability service.  The target customers will be those manufacturers and brands who are looking to solidify their sustainability reputation and claims with an on-package or on-product verification mark.

Whereas the traceability service will benefit from regulatory drivers as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and minimum recycled content mandates take effect across the US, the Trustmark service is driven from corporations seeking a marketing/branding edge.  After Kamilo's exposure at several plastic recycling industry events and a recent tech accelerator program where our focus had been on traceability, the Trustmark offering is generating strong interest with potential corporate partners.  The capability of a Trustmark alone is bringing new potential customers to the table who may not have been interested in traceability alone.

This work was supported by the EPA SBIR Program under contract number 68HERC23C0030. 

SBIR Phase II:

Digital Verification of Percentage Recycled Content in Individual Products to Advance Plastic Circularity