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HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JANUARY 13, 2025 5 DEAL WATCH might be a good platform for us to tell that." The additional sites might also help USA Waste expand its organic waste pickup and recycling efforts. "There is an ongoing conversation over how we remove more and more material out of the waste stream," Antonacci said. "We are a national leader." Constant innovation and investment USA Waste & Recycling was founded in 1974 as Somers Sanitation by Guy Antonacci and his wife, Mary Ann — grandparents to Frank Antonacci. The pair launched the business out of their home in Somers, using a single truck to provide waste collection for area residents and businesses. Today, the company has about 900 employees, and provides services in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. USA Waste and its affiliates own and operate collection and dispatch, single stream and commercial recycling, and construction and demolition recycling facilities as well as transfer stations. It also offers dumpster rentals. In recent years, the company has pioneered the use of compressed natural gas as an alternative fuel, operating five fueling stations throughout the state used by the company, partner municipalities and third-party trucking companies. USA Waste puts a premium on environmental initiatives. Half of its power comes from a dozen on-site "large-scale" solar installations; the rest is from certified renewable electricity sources. The Berlin plant is a good example of USA Waste's drive for innovation. The company in April 2007 paid $4 million for an existing recycling plant at 655 Christian Lane. In 2018, USA Waste began planning a state-of- the-art upgrade to install computers and automation equipment for the sorting process. A nearly 37,000-square-foot addi- tion was completed in 2022. Before the $50 million upgrade, the Berlin transfer station processed 20 to 25 tons per day, said Jonathan Murray, USA Waste's director of operations. Now, it moves about 800 to 1,000 tons daily, he said, using two shifts with about 125 total staff. The renovation brought the amount Following significant upgrades and the addition of state-of-the art technology, including AI-enabled optical scanners that analyze the purity of materials sorted on conveyor belts, USA Waste's Berlin recycling facility can now process about 800 to 1,000 tons daily, the company said. Bear-proof trash bins a hot commodity By Michael Puffer mpuffer@hartfordbusiness.com W ith the number of human and bear clashes on the rise, Enfield-based USA Waste & Recycling has seen brisk demand for its bear-resistant home trash receptacles. The 95-gallon rollout bins were introduced in May 2021. Today, more than 2,000 USA Waste customers pay $12-a-month to rent the bins. They are designed to be unlatched with one human hand, and are not easily manipulated by paws. The lock will also unlatch when held aloft and tipped upside down, which means they can be dumped by a garbage truck's automatic arm. Bear interactions are becoming so frequent that Connecticut lawmakers, last year, passed a bill expressly allowing people to kill a bear in defense of others or their pets, or to prevent a bear from entering an occupied home. The law also allows the Depart- ment of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to issue permits to cull bears who are destroying crops, wildlife or beehives when nonlethal options have failed. It also expressly forbids inten- tional feeding of bears, wild cats (like bobcats) and wild canines, including coyotes and foxes. DEEP Commissioner Katie S. Dykes testified that the number of reported human and bear clashes more than doubled from about 1,000 in 2015, to well over 2,000 in 2022. Bear home break-ins climbed from 10 in 2016, to more than 60 in 2022. A USA Waste & Recycling bear-resistant trash can. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO of material rejected for recycling at the Berlin facility down to less than 5%. Nationally, about 25% to 35% of materials transported to a recycling center end up not being recycled, according to USA Waste. In the Berlin plant, a maze of fast-moving conveyor belts moves through multiple levels of the facility, where metal, glass, cardboard, plastic, paper and other materials are sorted. The 2022 upgrade added optical sorting units, in which an arti- ficial intelligence-enabled computer uses strategically timed air blasts to sort recyclables from one conveyor belt to another. Manufactured using parts assem- bled in Germany, optical sorting units cost up to $1 million. The Berlin facility has 14 of them, three of which were added in 2024, Murray said. Last fall, USA Waste added 15 AI-enabled optical scanners that analyze the purity of materials sorted on conveyor belts, working with United Kingdom-based manu- facturer Greyparrot. Altogether, the units cost about $250,000 to install, Murray said. Combined, the new technology helps USA Waste create and docu- ment purer bundles of cans, paper, cardboard and other materials, which fetch higher prices from commodity buyers, Murray said. Several years ago, the Berlin plant added three automated fire suppres- sion systems that use computers and thermal imaging to spot a fire before it breaks out, and can also spray a fire with targeted foam. Those systems, which cost about $250,000 each, help the facility mitigate fire risks posed by lithium batteries that sometimes make their way into the waste stream. New technology at the Berlin plant allows USA Waste to recycle materials that most others cannot, including the black plastics found in takeout containers and polypro- pylene No. 5, a durable plastic used for medicine bottles, bottle caps, yogurt tubs and more. Murray, during a tour of the Berlin plant, said the extra space acquired by USA Waste in 2024 could help it continue to add modern and more efficient facilities. "It will allow us to have more space for things like this in the future," Murray said.