Myles Cohen

Beyond Simply the OCC Recycling Rate: An Exclusive First Look at Historical Ground-Truth Data

Myles Cohen, Board Member, VIPA USA

In 2022, Myles Cohen partnered with one of the prominent international business news organizations to better understand the OCC recycling rate.  This multi-month effort resulted in a tremendous amount of learning regarding the calculation of the OCC recycling rate, and was featured at a national recycling conference, covered at a session at SERC in 2023.   Subsequently, in 2024, the AF&PA developed a new calculation methodology for determining the OCC recycling rate, which Cohen refers to as a “calculation correction”.   Since then Cohen has built and developed a very robust methodology of OCC recovery, which he makes available to a select group of clients, but will reveal elements of this at SERC for the first time publicly.   

What you will see in this session, for the first time ever, is 3 to 4 years of OCC recycling data with details such as:

• Breakdown of recovery from RESIDENTIAL versus ICI.
• Trends of the above for selective generators, representing approximately 40,000 locations for 2021 to 2024, with some actual examples of national and even state-wide data for some generators of OCC.  
• New information on OCC LANDFILLED

With OCC representing ~70% of total paper recovery in the U.S.A., as well as the largest packaging item generated (more than plastic, glass or metal packaging generated or recovered), this is a session that you will not want to miss.

Myles Cohen serves on the board of VIPA USA, the largest independent seller of recovered fiber globally. He is also the founder of recycling and sustainable packaging advisory firm Circular Ventures, LLC. Myles has served as president of Pratt Industries’ recycling division and on the company’s executive committee. Prior to Pratt, he was President of Sonoco Recycling and on their Management Committee. He is a past president of Paper Stock Industries, ReMA’s national chapter for paper recyclers and producers.