Recycling and composting operator Circular Services has expanded its waste recovery infrastructure in the southeastern United States with the opening of a commercial-scale de-packaging facility in Vero Beach, Florida.
The new site is the first facility of its kind in Florida to secure an operational permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). The launch provides regional food and beverage manufacturers, distributors, and retailers with an alternative to landfill disposal and incineration for damaged, off-specification, or out-of-date packaged inventory.
The facility is fully operational and is integrated into the company’s existing state-wide network of organic recovery and composting hubs.
Industrial Scale and Regional Processing Infrastructure
The Vero Beach de-packaging facility has been engineered to manage high-volume commercial waste streams, establishing a processing capacity capable of handling more than 600 tonnes of packaged food and beverage material per week.
Florida’s food and beverage production sector represents one of the largest manufacturing segments in the region. Prior to the establishment of the Vero Beach facility, commercial food generators in the state faced logistical challenges and high tipping fees when disposing of packaged goods, as manual separation of plastic, cardboard, and organic waste was commercially unviable at scale.
The automated system utilises specialised mechanical separation technology to split the outer packaging from the organic food content. The recovery workflow is structured as follows:
📦 Packaging Separation – Separating plastics, metals, and cardboard from organic materials to prepare non-organic components for secondary recycling streams.
🥬 Organics Diversion – Extracting the food and beverage content and routing the organic slurry directly to an adjacent, co-located composting yard.
🚜 Nutrient Composting – Transforming the recovered organic materials into high-grade compost, soil blends, and mulch for commercial agriculture and landscaping.
♻️ Resource Circulation – Retaining both packaging materials and organic nutrients within regional supply chains, reducing reliance on local landfills.
Circular Economy Integration and Organic Recovery
The Vero Beach de-packaging plant runs alongside Circular Services’ pre-existing composting and organics recovery network. Operating as a major composter in Florida, the firm manages multiple processing sites across the state, including facilities in Greater Tampa, Sarasota, Lee County, and Palm Beach County.
By co-locating the de-packaging system next to its composting assets, the business aims to minimise transport emissions, lower processing overheads, and streamline logistical workflows for commercial waste hauliers.
According to David Bahrenburg, Vice President of Organics at Circular Services, the expansion addresses a critical gap in Florida's regional waste recovery infrastructure. He noted that the clean separation of packaging from organic materials is necessary to produce high-quality, nutrient-rich compost, demonstrating how the circular economy operates at an industrial scale.
Jessica Long, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Circular Services, added that the infrastructure has been engineered to keep both packaging materials and organic ingredients in circulation, giving commercial generators a localised mechanism to meet corporate landfill-diversion targets.
The completion of the Vero Beach facility allows Circular Services to scale its supply of finished organic compost and soil products to residential, commercial, and agricultural sectors across the state as regional demand for sustainable soil-management solutions continues to grow.
