Women Leaders in Waste: Kendra Kemp, VP of Western Operations, Federal Recycling and Waste Solutions

Kendra Kemp knows paper.

The vice president of Western Operations at Federal Recycling and Waste Solutions began her career in 1994 at a paper mill in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, working in process support. She quickly began making her cut in the industry, working at mills in Staten Island, NY and Lawton, Okla.

Kemp landed at Federal 19 years ago. At the time, the St.Louis. Mo.-based commercial paper and plastic recycler only had one plant. She progressed rapidly, moving from general manager to her current role overseeing six of the company's recycling facilities.

"Since I've been with Federal, we've added plants," she said. "We're now up to a total of nine facilities, eight plants and one warehouse that we operate out of."

She told Waste360 about how the changes she has seen over nearly two decades, specifically mentioning the impact of industrial decarbonization.

"Reducing your carbon footprint has become a big thing for a lot of manufacturers," Kemp said. "From our perspective, our biggest thing is to go in and try to understand exactly what our suppliers want and understand what their end goal is."

With an end result in mind, Kemp noted the challenges the waste and recycling industry is facing on its road to emissions reduction, specifically noting volatile commodity pricing among other obstacles.

"It's definitely a challenge. How do you get the stuff collected and sorted and to an end user that's really going to use it?" Kemp commented. "There are a lot of challenges out there. We're working through them as an industry, and I think we're headed in the right direction, but it's definitely taking everybody some time to learn what to do and what's the best path to get where we need to get. Everybody's path is different, just because every company's end goal is slightly different."

Inflation rates and economic pressures continue to dictate the industry's progress with business and environmental goals in 2023.

"Right now, markets are suppressed," she said. "We're coming off of a couple of pretty nice years of being able to move at reasonable pricing and pricing that allows us to do what we need to do in our recycling facility."

With lower commodity pricing, recyclers have looked to alternate ways to keep materials flowing throughout the supply chain.

"I think that new capacity will help the recyclers in pulling markets back up," she said. " Additionally, I think a lot of people are looking at waste to energy, which seems to be a pretty hot topic right now about how to avoid going to the landfill. We are trying to find ways that are feasible through pricing. We're trying to figure out what the best options are."

Kemp said the cross-collaboration between Federal International and the waste-to-energy sector has created new pathways to meeting environmental goals.

"We're working with them directly, not just from a supplier side, but them coming to us and asking us to process materials for them," she commented. "I think that's another leading indicator of people trying to be responsible with their byproducts."