PLASTICS: Setting the pace for recycling

Recently, representatives from 29 PLASTICS member companies gathered in Allentown, Pa., for the 2022 PLASTICS Recycling Committee Meeting — three days of informative presentations and productive discussions. 

The Recycling Committee represents PLASTICS members across the association’s three councils, bringing equipment manufacturers, processors and material suppliers together, aligning their efforts to put recycling at the forefront of their businesses. The committee works to enhance the management of plastic waste through efforts such as advocating for increased collection, sortation and recycling infrastructure, ensuring that the definition of recycling includes advanced recycling, educating people within and outside the plastics industry about plastics recycling and much more. 

Day One 

The three-day event began with a tour of the 75,000-square-foot J.P Mascaro & Sons‘ TotalRecycle facility in Birdsboro, Pa. Situated on 14 acres, TotalRecycle is a state-of-the-art, single-stream facility using cutting-edge technology that allows for the precise sorting and processing of commingled recyclable materials including, but not limited to, rigid and flexible plastics Nos. 1-7, cardboard, aluminum, newspaper, clear and colored glass, steel, tin and more. Approved to run 20 hours a day, six days a week, TotalRecycle has the capacity to handle 700 tons of recyclables per day. Mechanical and optical sortation enables separation of most of the materials the facility receives.   

Day Two 

Kevin Cronin, committee chair and VP for sustainability at Ultra-Poly Corp., led off an information-packed day of presentations covering the entire scope of Recycling Committee activity. 

Conor Carlin, managing director of Illig North America, who also serves as VP of sustainability for the Society of Plastics Engineers, led a discussion with participants on attracting and retaining employees in the current dynamic, intergenerational workforce. Overall, younger people are looking for organizations that resonate with their values and provide opportunities to grow. 

Emily Friedman, recycled plastics senior editor with ICIS, shared a market update for commodity plastics along with progress by companies in building advanced recycling facilities. The industry continues to see strong demand for recycled plastics to meet consumer demand and sustainability commitments. 

PLASTICS continues to work on fulfilling the need for recycled material through the association’s New End Market Opportunities (NEMO) program, which solves logistical/technical challenges for difficult-to-recycle plastics. Members of a Plastics-to-Asphalt project have diverted over 5 million plastic bags from landfills into parking lots and roads as proof of concept. Attendees also discussed the potential technology solutions for how to recycle LLDPE film for a yet-to-be-announced new focus area. 

With so much happening at the federal and state levels regarding policy that impacts plastics, staff from PLASTICS’ Government Affairs team presented a lay of the land and discussed how companies can be compliant. 

Day Three 

The 2022 Recycling Committee Meeting ended with a tour of the Ultra-Poly Corp. resin-recycling operation in Portland, Pa. Ultra-Poly started out in 1974 as a small, basement-based operation with an annual capacity of 2.8 million pounds. They have since grown to four locations and more than 300 million pounds capacity. Ultra-Poly serves plastics manufacturers in a broad range of markets including building products, housewares, lawn and garden, automotive, packaging, and materials handling. With its size, Ultra-Poly engages in multiple steps of the recycling process, including size reduction, extrusion and pelletization. The recycler’s state-of-the-art technology allows it to remove contaminants and feed materials at extremely fast rates, creating virgin-like pellets for all applications.  

Among the highlights of the tour was the opportunity to see a PLASTICS NEMO project in action. The association worked with Ultra-Poly on an initiative in which hard-to-recycle automobile bumpers are recovered from auto body shops and recycled to make new products. Joining the Recycling Committee on the tour was Congresswoman Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who represents Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

“This was a great event for Recycling Committee members, the first of its kind since before the pandemic. Attendance was at an all-time high, including the most first-time attendees,” said Andy Brewer, PLASTICS associate director of sustainability and materials. “Our ability to pair informative discussions with real-world tours of recycling facilities is extremely valuable to our industry. Events like this truly show the importance of recycling, as well as the leadership of engaged members to meet the industry’s sustainability goals.”