TOLEDO, OH – The Lucas County Commissioners have approved a resolution to enter into a ground-breaking agreement with Closed Looped Partners to establish a new Materials Recovery Facility that will receive, process, and market recyclables.
“This has been a 10-year plus journey for the Lucas County Solid Waste Management District. This is a city, county, private, public partnership that we haven’t seen before,” Commissioner Pete Gerken said. “This partnership with Closed Looped Partners will enable the local processing of all recycled materials captured in residential carts to offer a more sustainable solution than the current practice of shipping waste materials 90 miles to a facility to be processed.”
“We are thrilled to partner with Closed Looped Partners to bring this new Materials Recovery Facility to Lucas County,” Commissioner Tina Skeldon Wozniak said. “This partnership will enable us to take a significant step forward in our efforts to reuse and recycle to reduce waste going into the landfill and increase sustainability in our community. We can no longer rely on using landfills, and instead we must recycle as much as we can. It is the environmental thing to do.”
“We are excited for the opportunity to work with Closed Looped Partners in this initiative to extract value from single-stream recyclables and move Lucas County to a more sustainable future,” Commissioner Lisa A. Sobecki said. “Also, the investment in a new Materials Recovery Facility will play a key role to meet the waste reduction and recycling goals established in the Lucas County Solid Waste Management District’s 15-year management plan.”
Closed Looped Partners is a leading investment firm that focuses on building the circular economy. It will work with Lucas County to design and build a state-of-the-art facility that will process a variety of materials, including plastics, papers, and metals, with future opportunities to process textiles, electronics, and food waste.
“This public-private partnership with Closed Looped Partners will address the growing need for sustainable waste management in the city of Toledo and help reduce the amount of waste sent to the Hoffman Road Landfill,” said Toledo Council Member Nick Komives, who serves as chair of the Water Quality and Sustainability Committee. “The new Materials Recovery Facility will enable the Lucas County Solid Waste Management District to create a model for sustainable waste management in the city and the county.”
The Materials Recovery Facility will be built on 15 acres at Kuhlman Drive and South Avenue near I-75. Lucas County was awarded a $7 million grant from the State of Ohio Brownfield Remediation Program Fund to complete an environmental cleanup of a portion of the property.
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