What this means for you
Benefits for every Rhode Island household
One bin. Everything in.
No sorting. No rinsing. No separate bins for paper, plastic, metal, or food. Put everything out in one container — the facility handles separation and conversion inside, not in your kitchen or driveway. Every material type is accepted including items rejected by today's collection service.
Zero sorting at home
15–30 minutes back every week
Sorting, rinsing, flattening, and scheduling special drop-offs takes the average household 15–30 minutes per week. With one-bin collection, that time comes back to you. No more checking labels. No more separate collection days. No contamination worries.
Time returned to you
Your city earns while it converts
Rhode Island receives a Circular Royalty — a growing cash payment from Carbotura — for 30 years. That money flows back into Rhode Island's budget, over time reducing the disposal costs that feed into your local taxes and service charges. Over 30 years, the total is projected to reach hundreds of millions of dollars back to the state.
30 years of royalty payments
No impact on your neighbourhood
The facility is fully enclosed and airlocked — designed to have almost no odour or atmospheric discharge during normal operation. It's a manufacturing plant, not an open dump. No open material piles. No seagulls. No smoke. Designed to a standard you'd expect from any modern industrial facility.
Enclosed, low-impact design
The landfill lasts longer
Rhode Island's only active landfill in Johnston is projected to reach capacity around 2046. At full operation, the Carbotura facility diverts 44% of the material currently going there — extending the landfill's life by an estimated 15 or more years. That delays a very expensive problem for every Rhode Island taxpayer.
+15 years of landfill life
Clean water produced as a byproduct
The conversion process is designed to recover ultrapure water as a manufactured product. At full operation, that's enough clean water for an estimated 24,000 households every single day. This water is recovered from the material itself — not drawn from Rhode Island's water supply.
~2.4M gallons/day recovered
Runs entirely on its own power
The factory generates its own electricity from the hydrogen it produces during the conversion process. It doesn't draw power from Rhode Island's grid. It runs independently 24/7 — designed to operate even if the grid goes down. No energy cost passed to the state or to ratepayers.
Grid-independent operation
No open trucks on your roads
All collection vehicles are fully enclosed. No open-top loads travelling through residential streets. No loose material, no odours from vehicles, no visual impact on the roads where your family lives and drives. Collection happens on the same schedule you're used to — it just gets cleaner.
Fully enclosed collection
360 manufacturing jobs, not logistics jobs
The facility creates 360 direct skilled manufacturing jobs at full operation — plus another 1,080 jobs in the supply chain. These are high-wage industrial roles: engineers, operators, technicians. Not sorting jobs, not hauling jobs. Manufacturing roles that stay in Rhode Island for 30 years.
360 direct jobs + 1,080 indirect
Nothing buried. Everything converted.
44% of everything Rhode Island generates becomes a manufactured product: battery-grade carbon materials, hydrogen, recovered metals, and more. The factory is designed for near-zero landfill residual — material that goes in becomes product that comes out. Nothing is simply buried and forgotten.
44% becomes manufactured product
Rhode Island's climate contribution
At full operation, the facility is designed to remove the equivalent of about 104,000 cars’ worth of carbon from the atmosphere every year — that's roughly one car per four Rhode Island residents. Over 30 years, the total projected carbon benefit is equivalent to about 14 million tonnes. Rhode Island becomes a net contributor to national climate goals, not just a participant.
104,000 car-equivalent CO₂/yr
PFAS “forever chemicals” destroyed permanently
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are present in many household materials and in the biosolids from Rhode Island's wastewater system. Today, they get buried in the landfill or incinerated at temperatures that may not fully destroy them. The Carbotura process is designed to destroy PFAS permanently — inside a sealed, oxygen-free chamber at extremely high temperatures. No PFAS escapes into the air or water.
Permanent PFAS destruction
The change
What life looks like today — and with the factory
🔴 Today
Multiple bins — sort paper, plastic, glass, food separately
Rinse containers before putting them out
Rhode Island's only landfill, filling up with no replacement ready
The Woonsocket processing facility closes in 2027 — no alternative in place
PFAS “forever chemicals” buried in the ground, seeping over decades
Open-top vehicles carrying material through residential streets
Government pays to dispose of material and gets nothing back
Material hauled out of state at increasing cost when local capacity runs out
Carbon released slowly from decomposing material in the landfill over decades
↓
✅ With the factory
One bin — everything goes in, nothing to sort or rinse
Contamination is handled inside the facility — not your job
The landfill gets 44% fewer deliveries — lasting 15+ more years
A 30-year contracted processing alternative in place before 2027
PFAS destroyed permanently in a sealed, oxygen-free chamber
Fully enclosed, odour-controlled collection — no open loads on roads
Rhode Island receives a growing Circular Royalty for 30 years
Material stays in Rhode Island, processed at a local manufacturing facility
Carbon negative — removes the equivalent of 104,000 cars from the air per year
Your household
What you stop doing
Rinsing containers
You no longer need to rinse jars, bottles, or tins before putting them out. The facility handles contaminated and mixed materials — that's the point of the technology. Clean or dirty: everything is accepted.
Sorting by category
Paper, plastic, glass, metal, organic — they all go in one bin. You don't need to learn which items go where or keep track of different collection schedules for different categories.
Flattening and breaking down packaging
The facility processes intact items. No need to flatten boxes, break down packaging, or compress material before collection. Put it out as it comes.
Decoding material labels
No more checking recycling symbols, chasing down which plastics your service accepts, or guessing whether something goes in the bin or the bin lorry. All material types are accepted. No label-checking required.
Special drop-offs for electronics and batteries
Old phones, batteries, and small electronics currently require a special drop-off trip. Standard collection will accept all of them. No more scheduling special runs or holding items in your house for weeks waiting for a collection event.
Contamination worries
Today, one wrong item in a recycling bin can contaminate an entire load. That risk — and the rejection fees it can cause — disappears. There's no such thing as contamination when everything is accepted for conversion.