Plastics

QRS and Canusa Hershman open plastics recycling facility in Maryland

QRS of Maryland LLC, a joint venture between St. Louis-based QRS and Canusa Hershman Recycling Co., with corporate offices in Baltimore and in Branford, Connecticut, has opened a recycling facility in Dundalk, Maryland, to separate and recycle postconsumer plastics. The $15 million plant with more than $10 million in high-tech processing equipment will create 60 full-time jobs, according to the company.

The QRS of Maryland facility was funded in part by the Closed Loop Fund, an investment fund that makes below-market loans for recycling infrastructure. The plant is the Closed Loop Fund’s first investment in a full recycling facility.

“Our newest plastic recovery facility in Baltimore County provides communities and recyclers throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions with a reliable, domestic processing solution for mixed postconsumer plastic containers,” says Greg Janson, CEO of QRS.

The plant combines technology that will allow it to separate products by resin type and recycle them into raw materials for new products and packaging. The facility incorporates the latest optical scanning and cleaning equipment and is able to process 4,500 tons of materials monthly—nearly double the rate presently available domestically, the company says.

ACC announces 2015 Innovation in Plastics Recycling Awards winners

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), Washington, has announced that Demilec Inc., Publix and The Recycling Partnership have been selected to receive Innovation in Plastics Recycling Awards.

The awards recognize organizations that successfully bring new technologies, products and initiatives to communities and the marketplace that demonstrate significant advancements in plastics recycling. ACC announced the awards in recognition of America Recycles Day Nov. 15, 2015.

“We are thrilled to recognize this year’s award recipients,” says Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the ACC. “Each of these organizations is a leader in recycling innovation, and their contributions will likely inspire ongoing contributions to the rapidly growing field of plastics recycling.”

Demilec Inc., Arlington, Texas, converts polyethylene terephthalate (PET) scrap into polyols, which can be used in its spray foam insulation products. The company has recycled more than 300 million plastic bottles into spray foam insulation products in recent years and expects to recycle more than 35 million plastic bottles.

Lakeland, Florida-based Publix Super Markets has established itself as a leader in recycling rigid plastic packaging, such as commercial high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) containers, ACC says. With more than 1,100 stores and nine distribution centers, Publix optimized its back-of-store recycling stream using vertical and horizontal balers.

The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia, facilitates public-private partnerships to boost curbside recycling programs. Over the last 15 months, The Recycling Partnership has provided 115,000 large recycling carts and improved public education in Florence, Alabama; Columbia, South Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and East Lansing, Michigan. Thanks to its efforts, 18,000 additional households now have access to a recycling program that collects wide-mouth plastic containers in addition to bottles, the ACC says. Cumulatively these efforts are expected to recover an additional 22 million pounds of plastics ove

r the next 10 years. ACC’s Innovations in Plastics Recycling Awards contest is open to all U.S. companies, nonprofits, individuals and government bodies (including schools) that collect or process plastics for recycling, promote plastics recycling through education and infrastructure, manufacture equipment used to collect or process plastics for recycling or manufacture a new product made wholly or in part from recycled plastic.

Overall plastic bottle recycling rate inches upward in 2014

Plastic bottle recycling grew 97 million pounds in 2014, increasing 3.3 percent to top 3 billion pounds, according to figures released jointly by the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC). The organizations say this amounted to a 31.8 percent recycling rate in 2014.

Trends in plastics recycling highlighted in the report, “National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report,” available at http://bit.ly/1T6K9tn, include:

• Single-stream collection of household recyclables continues to grow, resulting in higher participation rates.
• Use of plastic bottles in packaging applications is expanding but is offset by continued lightweighting and increased use of concentrates with smaller, lighter bottles.
• Lack of access to away-from-home recycling remains a barrier to increased collection.

The report notes a higher percentage of postconsumer plastic bottle material was processed by domestic reclaimers in 2014. Exports of all postconsumer plastic bottles rose slightly (in pounds) but, at 21.9 percent, fell to the lowest percentage of exports in six years. This was because the amount of bottles collected increased faster than exports did, the organizations say, adding that the drop in exports may reflect the strength of the U.S. dollar and growth in domestic reclamation capacity.

The report is based on a survey of reclaimers conducted by Moore Recycling Associates Inc. of Sonoma, California.

SPC opposes biodegradability additives in petroleum-based plastics

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) has released a formal position paper against biodegradability additives for petroleum-based plastics. The SPC says it has evaluated the use of biodegradability additives for conventional petroleum-based plastics, finding these additives do not offer any sustainability advantage and may actually cause more environmental harm.

The position paper lists the following reasons for the SPC’s stance:

• These additives don’t enable compostability, which is the meaningful indicator of a material’s ability to beneficially return nutrients to the environment.
• They are designed to compromise the durability of plastic, and manufacturers have not yet demonstrated an absence of adverse effects on recycling.
• The creation of a “litter friendly” material is a step in the wrong direction, particularly when the material may undergo extensive fragmentation and generation of micropollution before any biodegradation occurs.
• The biodegradation of petroleum-based plastics releases fossil carbon into the atmosphere, creating harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

This position coincides with the recent Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) crackdown on false and misleading environmental claims, including five enforcement actions addressing biodegradable plastic claims, the SPC says. While the FTC action centers on the efficacy of the additives and their ability to work as advertised, the SPC’s stance is centered on the idea that the additives do not provide environmental benefits even if they do work as advertised.

“We feel strongly that the most ideal end-of-life scenario for petroleum-based plastics is recycling,” Adam Gendell, SPC senior manager, says. “There are ample opportunities for the sustainable usage of petroleum-based plastics, and we need solutions that help realize those opportunities. Unfortunately, biodegradability additives are not one of them.”