Diversys e-Manifest Tech Aims to Gain Trust in Recycling Through Good Data

The decades-old practice of recycling is in the midst of a paradigm shift as a next-generation sustainability concept—the circular economy—unfolds. With that paradigm shift comes a strengthening push for more transparency along the whole supply chain.

It is on that premise— the need for trustworthy data showing how the industry is doing—that Diversys Software co-founders built a digital platform, also branded as Diversys. The technology is for waste companies, stewardship organizations, regulators, or any organization with recycling requirements that needs to know just what’s happening to materials as they move from collections to remanufacturing.

The Canadian-best company creates digital manifests, verifying how much of what stream is picked up, by who, from what locations, and its final destination. The electronic tracking system also validates the volume of materials that actually get recycled, among details.  

Roger Barlow, CEO and cofounder Diversys Software, sees a transition to digital manifests as the way to go to boost trust and confidence in the whole recycling/reuse system. And he pitches such data-driven technology as a tool to improve operational efficiencies

“As material goes through the reverse supply chain from collection on, there are many issues for providers that rely on paper manifests. Paper manifests are often illegible, have omissions, errors, and sometimes fraudulent entries. And when you are not capturing the right data, everything you do from that point on is suspect,” he says

Detailed electronic records help hold supply chain partners accountable and provide organizations who are ultimately responsible for whole collections programs a means to show they are meeting their obligations.

That was the impetus for CalRecycle to go digital with its waste tire management division, which requires all California haulers and recycling and disposal facilities to submit manifest forms to the department that verify movement of tires between generators, haulers, and end-use facilities. 

California law actually has a provision specifically intended to accelerate a move to digital reporting. It authorizes CalRecycle to ask collectors and processors of end-of-life tires to submit electronic manifests for the department’s review.

CalRecycle manages over 60 million discarded tires in its home state every year and works with partners in Mexico to deal with this massive stream there too. For a job of this scale, hauler oversight, inspections, and varied enforcement measures that the staff is tasked with are no small feat.

Modernizing the paper-based waste tire tracking system will offer real-time information on the flow of used tires inside the state and to other states and countries, says Jessica Pureco-Garcia, information officer with CalRecycle.

The California regulator recently became the largest U.S. investor in Diversys.  

“We will look to the technology to cut waste created by thousands of paper forms submitted each year and to minimize data errors from over 130 million tire pick-ups and drop-offs each year. We expect to increase efficiency of hauler submissions and CalRecycle processing. [Ultimately], we expect to boost CalRecycle’s ability to prevent and address illegal tire hauling and storage of waste tires,” Pureco-Garcia says.

Organizations depend on what could be thousands of haulers, collection sites, and processing plants to operate with good faith, which may or may not happen.

So Diversys designed guardrails into the platform with security and data integrity in mind.

“For one, we capture a lot of the data under the hood, meaning automatically without human input. Minimizing [manual entries] reduces inaccuracies, whether those inaccuracies are intentional or not,” Barlow says.

The software is preconfigured, with material type, units of measure, and other data points already set up in the system. Haulers do little more than “check off the boxes” and maybe snap and upload photos. They capture details in the field in real time on any mobile device that runs on iOS or Android.

As another layer of protection, a GPS function tracks drivers’ movement from stop to stop.  

Information is sent into the cloud so administrators can access it from any location. Configurable dashboards enable end users to produce charts and other visuals, customized to highlight what they are looking for. That could be a high-level overview of operations on down to a single transaction.

Diversys customers have the flexibility to submit reports to regulators, clients, and other stakeholders in any desired format with any data set. And they can automatically output data into their own backend systems.

While the platform was designed to help with accountability and compliance, it has another role: supporting improvements in proficiency and bottom lines. End users track financial data; make payments and get reimbursed faster, in a more streamlined way. And they can peer into how different service providers and sites are performing relative to each other.

“Organizations are telling us they want to shift to digital.  For some their interest is compliance oriented. For some it’s operational efficiencies or cost savings. And for some it’s mainly altruistic; they want to demonstrate to their customers that what they say is recycled is in fact recycled,” Barlow says.

But he sees the greatest value in the ability to help recyclers brace for more regulations.

“We are moving to a compliance environment in recycling similar to how organizations have to file financial results. You cannot be wrong when you file your tax returns, and we are getting to that point with recycling submissions and claims,” he says.

Europe is already clamping down, and more sweeping legislation will come in the U.S. if the Security and Exchange Commission’s climate-related reporting rule is finalized.

For now, companies are taking steps on their own, trying to shield themselves from liability as vigilance heightens around greenwashing.

Headlines as recent as late September tell of majors like ExxonMobil who the state of California is suing for alleged misleading recycling claims. The controversy follows on the heels of the Canadian government’s investigation of fashion retailer Lululemon for similar allegations.

Not only are governments watching for missteps, but so are employees, consumers, and investors, a trend Barlow believes will force more companies to move away from legacy solutions such as paper and spreadsheets toward hardware and software for more secure and transparent information sharing.  In his view, this is the time to think about leaning more into technology.

Diversys has clients across Canada and the U.S. who manage assorted streams, including tires, beverage containers, used oil, and electronics. Barlow is in varied negotiations stages with more potential North American clients and a few overseas operators.

His hopeful plan is to announce more contracts in the coming weeks and months.