Myles Cohen

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

Myles Cohen, Founder, Circular Ventures, LLC 

In 2022, Myles Cohen from Circular Ventures, LLC partnered with one of the preemenent 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.  This required investigating granular details about all of the data surrounding OCC tonnages; the generation (including finished boxes imported from other countries), recovery, mill consumption, and export.  This work was featured at a national recycling conference, covered at a session at SERC in 2023, and featured as the cover story "Shadow of Doubt" in Recycling Today Magazine where it was rated as the NUMBER ONE article of the entire year.  Cohen also wrote the cover story for Resource Recycling’s April 2024 edition, and was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for this breakthrough investigative analysis.  Subsequently, in 2024, the AF&PA developed a new calculation methodology for determining the OCC recycling rate, and that new methodology has vast similarities to Cohen’s and the international news organization’s work to communicate a more realistic recycling rate.  

Since then Cohen has built and developed a very robust database of OCC recovery (the numerator in the calculation), which he makes available to a select group of clients.  Other than to this select group of clients, Cohen has not shared this granular data with the marketplace for OCC recovery data.

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 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024
• A sampling of EXPLICIT OCC recycling data (tonnages) gleaned from approximately 40,000+ locations, for multiple years
• A predictive algorithm developed to assist you to project OCC generation and recovery from different generators, as well as new information on OCC LANDFILLED
• Learn about new metrics that have never been utilized previously
• What is really the recycling rate for TOTAL paper in the U.S.A.

While the above appears to be heavy on data, much non-quantitative market intelligence will be shared in this session.  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 is the founder of recycling and sustainable packaging advisory firm Circular Ventures, LLC.  He also serves on the boards of VIPA USA, the largest independent seller of recovered fiber globally. Myles has been in the packaging and recycling industry for the past two decades, where he 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.