Newsworthy

Plastics

Polypropylene Recycling Coalition releases first annual report

The Recycling Partnership’s (TRP’s) Polypropylene Recycling Coalition has released its inaugural annual report, showcasing what it calls “measurable improvement” in the circularity of polypropylene (PP).

The Washington-based coalition, which was established in 2020, awards grants to material recovery facilities (MRFs), secondary sorters and reclaimers to increase acceptance, improve capture and deliver higher-quality recycled PP to responsible end markets. Together, the coalition says its members have helped deploy more than $15 million across 60 grants, resulting in new or improved PP recycling access to 48 million people.

The resin, also known as No. 5 plastic, is ubiquitous in people’s daily lives and widely used in packaging for dairy foods, salads, deli items, microwavable meals and more, according to the coalition, which adds that its high value has resulted in growing demand for postconsumer recycled PP.

However, the coalition notes only 8 percent is recycled each year. The coalition’s grants address challenges by enabling recycling facility upgrades, improved sorting capabilities and community engagement needed to boost PP recycling rates.

“In just four years, the coalition has improved [PP] recycling access, capture, sortation and processing in more than half of U.S. states, and there is more to do,” says Brittany LaValley, vice president of materials advancement at TRP. “While we celebrate this progress, we know there is significant opportunity to continue to expand the demand for recycled polypropylene, spur investments in access, education and infrastructure and create a more robust market for this versatile material.”

• Broadening community recycling program acceptance of PP. The coalition notes the How2Recycle label designates key PP formats as “widely recyclable,” ensuring people have guidance to get more material in the bin. As a result, the coalition says 48 million people gained or improved access to recycle their PP.
• Ensuring more recycling facilities can successfully sort PP. This will be done by increasing community recycling program acceptance by 11 percent. As one example, the Scott County Waste Commission facility in Iowa received a coalition grant, and its new optical sorter captured seven times more PP in the first six months of this year than it did in all of 2023.
• Supporting responsible end markets. With 64 million pounds of PP recycled annually, the group says this will lead to an increased supply of reliable postconsumer recycled PP for reuse in packaging and products. For example, a grant awarded to Ocean County’s Northern Recycling Center in New Jersey for upgraded equipment means the county collects more PP and sells the material to multiple domestic buyers.
• Informing policy. The coalition notes PP has been added to “favorable” or potentially recyclable lists in states such as California and Oregon, paving the way for more of this material to be recycled. As an example of preinvestment, a grant to include dedicated PP recycling at Recology in Sonoma Marin, California, was part of the company’s $35 million MRF retrofit that was completed earlier this year.

The Polypropylene Recycling Coalition says accomplishing a 5 percent increase in PP recycling rates requires deploying $10 million in new capital throughout 2025 that is strategically focused on achieving critical milestones. This funding is part of the group’s comprehensive strategy to deploy $55 million in new capital to modernize U.S. recycling infrastructure and increase PP capture nationwide.

Glass

Solarcycle to add recycling plant to Georgia campus

Solarcycle, a solar panel recycling company headquartered in Mesa, Arizona, has revealed plans to build a 5-gigawatt (GW) recycling facility in Cedartown, Georgia, adjacent to the solar glass factory the company announced in February.

The glass factory will be the first in the U.S. to produce specialized glass for crystalline-silicon (C-Si) photovoltaics and will have the capacity to manufacture 5 to 6 GW annually. The company plans to have more than 1,250 full-time employees across both locations once the campus reaches full capacity.

Solarcycle currently operates recycling facilities in Odessa, Texas, and Mesa, Arizona. Its new 255,000-square-foot recycling facility in Georgia will have the capacity to recycle and recover materials from 10 million solar panels per year, according to Solarcycle, enough to process an estimated 25 percent to 30 percent of the retired solar panels in the U.S. by 2030. The Georgia plant initially will recycle 2 million solar panels per year, scaling with growing market demand for end-of-life solar services and domestic solar supply.

In addition to glass, Solarcycle recovers silver, copper, aluminum and silicon.

The Georgia recycling facility will debut the company’s next-generation recycling process, which will be able to recover up to 99 percent of photovoltaic (PV) materials and is optimized for bifacial C-Si panels, according to Solarcycle. The company says this closed-loop process is more flexible and scalable than previous recycling solutions while achieving higher value and mass recovery rates.

Recyclers are using the same technology platform for monofacial and bifacial panels, which is extremely inefficient and leads to much lower-quality recovered materials, Solarcycle says.

“Our original technology was optimized for crystalline panels, which are the majority of the panels currently installed in the U.S.,” Jesse Simons, Solarcycle co-founder and chief commercial officer, tells Recycling Today. “We have developed a number of innovations for this technology, including automating large portions of the disassembly line and increasing the speed and purity of the glass removal process. Our process can extract up to 95 percent of the valuable materials in a panel.”

Regarding the new equipment the company will use at its Georgia site, he says, Solarcycle will reveal more in the coming months.

The new recycling facility is move-in ready and will be operational by mid-2025. The adjacent glass factory will be operational in 2026, and Simons says the company plans to use the majority of its recycled glass cullet at its glass factory.

Vertically integrating recycling and glass production offers significant benefits to Solarcycle, according to Simons.

“Unlike competing recyclers that downcycle glass material into things like road beads or roadbed aggregate, [we recycle] solar glass directly into new solar panels,” he says. “This is a very valuable glass that requires extremely low iron silica to ensure maximum transparency.

“Using recycled glass to manufacture new glass saves material costs, eliminates shipping and trade risks and requires less energy to produce,” Simons adds. “We can leverage these benefits to manufacture solar glass in the U.S. that competes with highly subsidized and carbon-intensive glass from overseas. Today, all solar glass in the U.S. is imported from overseas. Our glass factory is on track to be one of the first in the U.S. to manufacture the type of rolled patterned solar glass needed for crystalline silicon panels.”

Solarcycle says it has long-term partnerships with more than 70 of the nation’s largest energy companies to recycle retired solar panels.