Cincinnati-based Rumpke Waste & Recycling provides waste and recycling solutions for customers throughout Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. Founded in 1932 by William F. Rumpke, who ran a junkyard and coal delivery business in Cincinnati, the company has only continued to grow over the last 93 years in business. In June 2024, Rumpke opened its new Rumpke Recycling and Resource Center in Columbus, Ohio—the largest and most technologically advanced recycling facility in North America, according to the company.
ReMA News sat down with Jeff Snyder, senior vice president of Recycling and Sustainability, and Becky Reichenbach, corporate recycling marketing manager, to chat about Rumpke and the evolution of the recycled materials industry.
Could you tell me about Rumpke and your work?
Jeffery: Rumpke is a large waste and recycling organization that operates 16 recycling plants across Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, as well as 16 landfills, and about 29 transfer stations. We have about 4,300 employees and about 2,800 trucks on the road every day.
I lead our recycling line of business. There are about 13 of us who work in corporate recycling, and we do everything from sales and marketing to process, operations, and maintenance. The corporate recycling department supports all our recycling activities from plants to sales, to selling of the commodities in the marketplace.
Becky: I oversee the movement of our recyclable commodities from our 16 plants. We feel that there’s a true partnership with each of our end users. We want them to be hands-on with us and we’re hands-on with them. We want a lot of communication because we do move so many tons. Every year since I’ve been with Rumpke, we’ve moved more and more.
Jeffery: For perspective, we moved about 63,500 tons in 2024 and all that tonnage gets moved by Becky and one other person who helps her.
Becky: I also want to bring up our glass recycling plant in Dayton, Ohio. The glass from our two MRFs gets transferred to Dayton and we bring in glass from other MRFs and post-industrial glass. Many years ago, Rumpke saw how much glass was ending up in the waste stream even though container glass is infinitely recyclable. Through trial and error, we’ve created something in Dayton that hardly any waste haul does in our country. We’re proud of what we do in the glass space and we’re members of the Glass Recycling Foundation. We try to spread the message about glass recycling, it’s an important commodity to us.
What brought each of you into the recycled materials industry?
Jeff: I grew up in the paper industry. When I graduated college, I worked at RockTenn, now known as WestRock. I started in 1991 on the converting side of the business and then in the recycling side running and building plants. When I left, I had the opportunity to start some paper mills with Pratt Industries. Five years ago, my predecessor at Rumpke was retiring and he asked if I would take his place. If it’s happened in recycling, I’ve done it at some point whether its brokerage, plants, or buying paper at paper mills I’ve been on the full spectrum.
Becky: I graduated from Purdue with an Environmental Studies degree. For my first job out of college I gave tours at MRFs in the Chicago area. Then I worked for waste management in the Chicago area on the trash side then migrated to recycling and working in paper companies. Then the opportunity came up to work at Rumpke. No two days are ever the same in this industry, and that’s especially true at Rumpke—it’s so much fun and always changing quickly.
What sets the recycled materials industry apart from other industries?
Becky: Two things come to mind. This industry is based on the market, and the market changes every day. There’s so much going on in the world and our industry is really impacted by everything going on across the globe. The market changes every day, and you need to pivot each time the market changes. That’s the fun part. I think what’s happening now about policy, regulations, and possibly EPR—the industry evolved since the China Fence and Green Sword in 2017. The recycling investment we’ve seen in the U.S. has been incredible, and I think it will continue.
Jeff: I agree. Part of my job at Rumpke focuses on sustainability. We move 35,000 tons a month of single stream recycling through our system and serve over two million customers who are recycling every day. I work on the inbound stream and it’s changing a lot.
For something to be recyclable you need to be able to run it through a MRF effectively and sort it. You also need to be able to take the commodity and turn it into something new. That’s what I try to focus on—how do we get the materials that we’ve wanted for years out of landfills like water bottles, aluminum cans, and milk jugs? How do we build access, trust, and participation rates? Those are the questions that keep me invested in this type of work.
How does Rumpke give back to the local community?
Becky: Our communications team gives tours of our plants to the public including schools, community groups, and residents who want to come see our work.
Jeff: We provide many sponsorships around the community—whether it’s a sporting team or festival. We also work with universities, especially Ohio State. We provide support for their sustainability program as well as scholarship opportunities.
We also partner with Cincinnati fire stations to provide drop-off locations for lithium-ion batteries. That’s a huge issue and consumers often don’t know what to do with these batteries. There are 25 fire stations around the city of Cincinnati where we provide funding for them to be drop-off centers for the batteries.
What are you excited for about joining ReMA?
Jeff: We’ve been aware of ReMA for years and we’re looking forward to being members. One important focus area for us is on the safety side of the business and we know that ReMA strongly prioritizes safety in the recycled materials industry.
Becky and I have each been part of ReMA in our past lives at other companies. I think joining ReMA will help take Rumpke to the next level—it’s going to be huge for what we want to do in the future whether that’s recycling, sustainability, safety, or whatever it happens to be.
Can you tell me about the new facility that opened in Columbus?
Jeff: We opened our new MRF in Columbus, Ohio last June. It was a great opportunity to go above and beyond and build an incredible facility. We built a stellar education center where we walk folks through the material journey starting in the grocery store when you buy something in a package to the time you recycle it, and it moves through our system and then it gets turned back into something new.
When you walk into the education center it almost feels like an amusement park—it’s colorful and lively, there’s music playing. It’s a great experience for kids and adults to learn about what we do every day and keep more recyclables out of landfills.
When it comes to recycling, we’re not afraid to go on a limb and try new things whether that’s building a new type of MRF or an X-ray system to find lithium-ion batteries. It’s all about driving the recycling infrastructure forward. We have this great infrastructure and now we need to build access, participation, and trust to get more people recycling and get more materials coming into the facility.