Plastics

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California SB 54 ups plastic pressure

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law Senate Bill 54, which creates several amendments to the state’s Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 and is designed to address plastic litter and low recycling rates in the Golden State.

The text of SB 54 sets reporting requirements for transfer station and “disposal facility” operators to provide “periodic information to the [state] on the types and quantities of materials that are disposed of, sold or transferred to other recycling or composting facilities or specified entities.”

The bill also states, “The California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 regulates the disposal, management and recycling of, among other solid waste, plastic packaging containers and single-use foodware accessories.”

At least one advocacy group sees this as the death knell for plastic in several applications in the state. Washington-based Oceana calls the measure “the strongest plastic source-reduction policy in the nation” and “the first state law to mandate source reduction of all single-use plastic packaging and foodware, from detergent bottles and bubble wrap to cups and utensils.”

According to Oceana, the law requires packaging producers and product makers to “slash their single-use plastic packaging and foodware by at least 25 percent by 2032 and implement the first reuse and refill mandates in the nation.”

Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics campaign director, says, “California’s effort to aggressively tackle plastic pollution at the source and require companies to shift from throwaway plastic to reusable and refillable alternatives sends a strong signal to the nation and the world.”

The Washington-based American Chemistry Council (ACC), previously told Recycling Today it had concerns about the future of chemical recycling investments and other unintended consequences if the bill became law.

However, following passage of the bill, Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at the ACC, released a statement saying the ACC is pleased that the anti-plastics ballot initiative has been withdrawn and that SB 54 was signed into law.

“Negotiating SB 54 over the last 18 months has not been an easy process,” he says. “We appreciate the hard work of Sen. Ben Allen and his staff to get us to this resolution. The law is not perfect, as we outlined in our previous statement. However, SB 54 is a better outcome than the withdrawn anti-plastics ballot initiative. Had that initiative passed, it would have cost Californians an estimated $9 billion annually but only invest approximately 30 percent of that to improve recycling in the state.”

The Washington-based American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, tweeted it is “pleased California policymakers [have] taken a first-of-its-kind approach to extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation that recognizes the success of paper recycling.”

The AF&PA’s tweet says SB 54 “provides an off-ramp for industries like paper that have already stepped up and made the investments necessary to achieve a high recycling rate.”

“The paper recycling rate in the United States reached a record of 68 percent in 2021, and California’s new law recognizes this,” AF&PA spokesperson Natalie Urban says.

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, says it supports California’s SB 54 “as a positive step forward in the strengthening of postconsumer plastics recycling.”

The association says, “The bill not only ensures recycling access throughout the state of California, which is critical to increasing recycling rates but also provides necessary support for those recycled materials that do not yet have an adequate level of end market demand to allow for economically self- sufficient recycling. We applaud Sen. Allen for including an off-ramp for producer responsibility upon maturity of the end market for a particular recycled material.”

Macquarie invests in PET recycler

Photo courtesy of Circularix

HPC Industries LLC, Los Angeles, the former owner of defunct bottle-to-bottle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycler CarbonLite, which also was based in Los Angeles, and Australia-based Macquarie Group’s Commodities and Global Markets group have formed a joint venture to produce recycled PET (rPET) pellets that will operate under the name Circularix.

Leon Farahnik, chairman of HPC and the former chairman and CEO of CarbonLite, serves as chairman and CEO of Circularix, while Alex Delnik, also formerly of CarbonLite as well as being the former CEO and founder of Verdeco Recycling, will serve as president and chief operating officer.

In addition to its investment as a partner in the joint venture, Macquarie is assisting Circularix with project debt, equipment finance, foreign exchange hedging and other risk management solutions to support its growth.

Farahnik declines to tell Recycling Today the stake that Macquarie has taken in Circularix.  

Plans include building and operating five recycling plants across the U.S. with total annual production capacity of more than 275 million pounds of rPET. The first plant, in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, is expected to be running by December.

Farahnik says the 100,000-square-foot plant is near Allentown, Pennsylvania, a “major hub for all of our customers.” It will have the capacity to produce 55 million pounds of food-grade rPET pellets from flake rather than bottles, which it will purchase from within a 200-to-250-mile radius of the plant.

He says he expects the next site, which will be in Florida, to be operational in the second quarter of 2023. After that, roughly every six months, the company plans to open sites in Texas, Arizona and the Pacific Northwest, having chosen these locations because of their proximity to customers that Circularix intends to supply.

Farahnik says, “Our move into rPET production is the beginning of a major and much-needed capacity expansion in the United States, and we are excited to continue playing an important role in the plastics recycling industry by uniting our experience with Macquarie’s.”