COR leaders were recently featured on the cover of the Portland Business Journal (PBJ), with COO AJ Simpson, founder Al Simpson, and CEO Alando Simpson at their recycling facility in East Portland.
While COR has been featured many times, we are extremely proud to see the family on the cover of our region’s most influential business publication.
The Portland Business Journal story didn’t go unnoticed: We heard from political + business leaders across the State, and yet another Oregon senator toured COR’s facility last week (more on that soon!).
The PBJ article features how in addition to growing it’s waste management and recycling business, COR has continued pivoting into sustainability innovation and building the circular economy.
This includes a public-private partnership to build the “COR Campus,” the area’s first recycling innovation hub, recovering organic waste (i.e. food waste) that can be turned into renewable energy or compost for farmers via Oregon’s circular economy, and unveiling the State’s first electric garbage truck with PGE and the City of Portland.
And it makes sense given COR’s history. When asked why he got into the waste & disposal business nearly 30 years ago, Founder AI Simpson made clear that helping the planet would be a key focus of COR from day one:
“We were trying to save the earth … and nobody was recycling a lot. The bigger companies – there were only maybe a couple of them that really ran the market – they called themselves recycling, but they were really only about money.”
And under our current system:
There’s tons of money, in the tons going to landfills.
As the PBJ article shares, more than 150 million tons of municipal waste are landfilled each year. Landfilling is the industry standard because of it’s simplicity and profitability, but CEO Alando Simpson challenged our community not to follow the status quo and build the infrastructure to recover more from our waste stream and keep valuable material out of landfills:
“Our COR Campus model is the one that we should all get behind, not because it was thought of here, this isn’t a new idea, but it’s a practical approach we can take towards addressing economic, social, and environmental challenges that we face,” said Alando.
“But more importantly, it can become an economic development driver for our region, because there’s no other city in our country that is doing it on a large scale.”
To hear more about COR’s history and the COR Campus of the future, access the full Portland Business Journal article here.
If you’re ready to partner with COR for your waste, recycling, or sustainability needs, contact us today.