Outside the Box: Perfect Circle Recycling Harvests Packaged Food Waste

What’s to be done with a semitrailer of bags of off-spec marshmallows? Or thousands of cases of bottled baby formula that did not seal perfectly? How about a truckload a week of miscellaneous packaged food from a supermarket chain?  West Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year Honoree Perfect Circle Recycling is working to keep packaged food out of the landfill. 

Food arrives at the Grand Rapids facility in case quantities.  Packaged product is removed from the corrugated cardboard cases by hand and then loaded into a Turbo Separator depackaging system that, according to COO Todd Wilson, “swats the food right out of the packaging.” The packaging material (plastic, boxboard, metal) emerges remarkably clean and ready to be recycled.  

Where possible, under agricultural regulations and the food processor’s standards, extracted food is sold to farmers as livestock feed. Otherwise, it goes to composting or anaerobic digestion partners. 

A COVID-19 Success Story

Wilson, the COO, started the company as a side business in 2012, collecting food scraps from weekend events and festivals for composting. Along the way, he began looking at the needs of large companies with ongoing food waste streams, making connections with potential partners, and seeking funding for a machine that removes food from its packaging. In 2019, Todd’s partner, Kristi King, joined as president, and his sister, Jennifer Betz, began serving as CFO.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Todd and Kristi lost their jobs on the same day. “Todd convinced me that we should use this time to go for it with Perfect Circle,” said King. 

By October, they had leased a 20,000-square-foot building in Walker and purchased the Turbo Separator.  By the end of their first year, the company had reclaimed two million pounds of food and recyclable packaging materials. 

The business has seen steady growth since, “If I can get a food processor or retailer in the door to see what we do, they are universally excited about it,” said Wilson.  Perfect Circle Recycling provides detailed volume reports to their customers, a great benefit to corporate sustainability initiatives. 

Over their second and third years, Perfect Circle Recycling supplied an additional 12 million pounds to recyclers, farmers, composters, and digesters. It moved to a larger 40,000-square-foot facility in Grand Rapids. It also has launched two circular product lines:  Perfect Circle Protein+ suet blocks and feeders and Baitman’s, which offers recovered candy, seeds, and canned foods for use as bait by bear hunters.  

In addition to the 2023 West Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year Award from Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, Perfect Circle Recycling was one of 70 small businesses nationwide recognized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with an America’s Top Small Business Award.