IRG signs MoU with Stelco

International Recycling Group LLC (IRC), headquartered in New York City, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Canadian steel company Stelco Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Stelco Holdings Inc., to enter into exclusive discussions to supply polymer material primarily to Stelco’s facility in Nanticoke, Ontario, to be used as an iron-reducing agent.

In connection with the proposed partnership, IRG says it will evaluate the feasibility of constructing a large plastics recycling plant.

In a news release announcing the MoU, IRG says the new plastics recycling plant, if built, would be owned and operated by IRG at an expected investment of $125 million. The plant could process more than 500 million pounds of plastics annually, which IRG says could be collected from communities in Ontario.

The proposed plastics recycling plant would use advanced sorting technology to extract polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers and polypropylene (PP), the company says. IRG would process the plastic scrap into pellets, which would be sold on the open market.

Mitch Hecht, IRG founder and chairman and a former steel executive, says he has been working on bringing together the steel and plastics recycling industries for more than a decade. Prior to forming IRG, Hecht was the chief financial officer of International Steel Group.

“When half the plastic material has no recycling market and is currently landfilled or exported to developing countries, it’s impossible to justify the investment in advanced sorting machines,” Hecht says. “The single-stream model of letting machines do all the sorting has never really worked.

“By building a secondary processing facility that repurposes absolutely every pound of recyclable plastics coming into the door for best and highest use, the economics suddenly make sense,” he continues. “We can get beyond the confusion of having to identify ‘good’ plastics from ‘bad’ when filling the blue box. This is what will drive municipal recycling rates much higher.”