Randolph Burns on recycling
From OI Glass CSO Randy Burns // Shifting to a Circular Economy in the Great Lakes Region · · Council of the Great Lakes Region
“Recycled glass is not sent overseas and never has been; it is a domestic resource used for domestic uses, and it's also used close to where it's recycled to make new containers, including right here in the Great Lakes region.”
On , Randolph Burns, Senior Vice President, Chief Administrative & Sustainability Officer at O-I GLASS INC, spoke about recycling during OI Glass CSO Randy Burns // Shifting to a Circular Economy in the Great Lakes Region on Council of the Great Lakes Region.
About Randolph Burns
In a September 2021 talk, Randolph Burns, Chief Sustainability & Corporate Affairs Officer of O-I Glass, argued that "nudge blindness"—an unconscious bias toward ignoring the subtle cues that shape behavior—is a key obstacle to advancing a circular economy. He stated that existing nudges in recycling systems, such as single-stream household recycling, often prioritize convenience over value preservation, contributing to a U.S. national recycling rate that has "hovered around the mid-30 percent for years." Burns advocated for identifying and modifying these nudges, citing deposit return systems like Michigan's as effective examples that achieve recovery rates "more than double the national average." Burns also emphasized that glass is "infinitely recyclable" and that recycled glass is a domestic resource used close to where it is collected. He criticized landfill fees that are "an order of magnitude lower" than the cost of separating recyclables, arguing that such pricing nudges the waste industry away from recovery. To create a circular economy, Burns recommended finding existing nudges, understanding their effects, eliminating linear ones, and replacing them with circular alternatives across the entire value chain.