Several regional and national retail chains participate in Novolex’s Bag-2-Bag program.
Photos courtesy of Novolex
Plastic bags tend to get a bad reputation in the United States. Many material recovery facilities (MRFs) across North America view them as contamination because they get tangled in sorting equipment. For more than a decade, some city and county governments in the U.S. have proposed and implemented taxes on plastic bags or banned them in an effort to reduce plastic litter and consumption.
Yet, Novolex, Hartsville, South Carolina, sees opportunity to close the loop on plastic bags. The company started its Bag-2-Bag recycling program in 2006 to reduce the amount of litter caused by plastic bags and to turn those old bags into new bags at its Novolex Hilex Poly recycling center in North Vernon, Indiana, or its recycling facility in Shawano, Wisconsin. The company also has about a half dozen other recycling partners to help. Phil Rozenski, senior director of sustainability and corporate affairs at Novolex, says the program offers a sustainable solution to the country’s plastic bag concerns.
Through Bag-2-Bag, Novolex connects with grocery stores and other retailers. Collected bags are gathered into bales that are transported to one of Novolex’s recycling facilities in North Vernon or Shawano. The recycling center then processes the used bags into recycled pellets. The pellets are used to manufacture new plastic bags.
“As a company, we consume more than 100 million pounds of recycled polyethylene film in a year,” Rozenski says. “We’ve gotten good with recycled content, and we’ve helped to mentor other companies to help us meet the demand for recycled content. We hope we can set the example, and more companies will do the same thing—that’s really who we are.”
Recycling process
Novolex contracts with a few regional and national retail chains in the U.S. and Canada. These retailers will collect and bale plastic bags and plastic packaging film from consumers and their warehouses. A retailer informs Novolex when it has a trailer full of plastic bag and film bales, and Novolex hires a firm to haul the trailer to one of its facilities or recycling facility partners.
“We determine where to send it depending on our workload,” Rozenski says. “We work with about a half dozen [third-party recycling partners]. Some partners are on the West Coast, some are in the central U.S., some are in the South. Part of sustainability is reducing how much you move stuff, so we feel it’s key to own two facilities and have partners.”
Once Novolex receives the bales, Rozenski says the company or its partners load them into a bale breaker. “We have a guillotine that shaves off layers and opens up the bale. Then, we do a visual inspection to see if anything doesn’t belong. It then gets shredded.”
One common contaminant is grocery store receipts. To remove the receipts, Novolex places the shredded polyethylene (PE) into a tank. The PE floats, while the receipts and any other contaminants sink.
“The magic of polyethylene floating is all it takes,” Rozenski says.
From there, Novolex performs an extrusion process and turns the PE film into pellets. Finally, those pellets are used as feedstock for plastic bag products. The company’s plastic bags typically use about 25 to 40 percent recycled content.
“We use a mix of content in the bags,” Rozenski adds. “Typically, we have 30 percent recycled content. Some are higher, some are lower. We could do 100 percent, but there’s not enough supply. We’re looking at how to grow our recycled content and are constantly looking for new partners to meet that demand.”
Reaching retailers
To ensure contamination remains low in bales, Novolex regularly communicates with its retail chain partners. Rozenski says the company works with partners to educate them and their employees on what is considered contamination.
Through the Bag-2-Bag program, Novolex can accept plastic retail bags, produce bags, newspaper bags, dry cleaning bags, cereal box liners, paper towel film wrap, toilet paper film wrap, wrap on cases of soda and canned vegetables, sealed air pouches in mailed packages and Ziploc or other zipper-style bags (provided the zippers are removed prior to recycling).
The program does not accept salad bags, frozen vegetable bags, pet food bags, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, polyurethane foam, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate trays, plastic bottles, metals or potentially hazardous materials, such as medical waste.
Rozenski says the quality of bales Novolex receives is typically good; however, some level of contamination is usually present. If the company notices a trend, it works to educate the retail location.
“Every now and then, someone in the back end of a retail store’s distribution center will see plastic material, like nylon strapping, and they add it,” he says. “We mark these bales. If we find something, we work with that retailer to educate employees not to put that in there, and it changes.”
“Everyone in the value chain has to work together. That’s the key to being more sustainable.” – Phil Rozenski, senior director of sustainability and corporate affairs, Novolex
To maintain good partnerships with the regional and national retail chains, Rozenski adds that it’s important to connect with four types of people: procurement personnel who buy the bags, operations personnel who collect the bags, marketing personnel and sustainability personnel.
One of the biggest challenges in the program is educating retailers that plastic bags don’t have to be just one color. Recycled plastic bags aren’t usually the vibrant colors some retailers are used to; they are usually gray or brown as a result of mixing plastic film together.
“It’s a different color,” Rozenski says. “It’s easiest to make a tan or gray bag. Once the retailer understands that gray or brown bags communicate sustainability, they get it.
“Partnering with your customers is key,” he continues. “Everyone in the value chain has to work together. That’s the key to being more sustainable. Get everyone involved together, and you can solve more complex problems.”
The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at msmalley@gie.net.
Making sustainable connections
Features - Plastics Recycling magazine | Plastics Trailblazers
Danny Schrager’s passion is creating ties in the circular economy that advance plastic’s future.
Danny Schrager has specialized in plastics recycling and sustainability for 30 years. In that time, he’s helped recycle more than 800 million pounds of postconsumer and postindustrial plastics.
He started GearedforGreen in 2012. The New York-based company provides a wide range of consulting services to help companies achieve their sustainability goals. Notably, GearedforGreen maintains a contracted network of recycled resin suppliers that collectively produce more than 1 billion pounds of recycled resin per year, which it connects with clients that need recycled resin.
The company also helps its clients recycle plastic, increase use of recycled resin in their products and make and use plastic packaging more sustainably. Additionally, GearedforGreen assists its clients with implementing education and outreach programs, such as communicating about recycling initiatives, using ocean plastic and participating in beach cleanups.
Schrager says his passion is helping connect the plastics supply chain in circular economies “to make plastics sustainable together.”
Schrager shares his thoughts on the industry in the Q&A that follows.
How has plastics recycling changed over the years? A few changes come to mind; one would be technology development. That includes chemical plastics recycling; that’s a very big development that’s going to make significant changes in the plastics recycling landscape.
And, certainly advancements in technology in terms of cleaning, washing, filtration and separation, they’re helping us and many others to improve the quality of the recycled plastic materials, so they could be much more widely used as raw materials in everyday manufacturing. Manufacturers are used to using virgin resin, and recycled [material] quality isn’t quite as good as virgin resin. So, the better our technologies are to make clean recycled pellets, the more widely used they’ll be.
You can see that the industry is really getting behind [the] circular economy in a big way. There [are] more and more connected, collaborative, transparent supply chains starting up. Once you start to create these circular economies and supply chains, you start to use resources more effectively. You start to design products more sustainably, with end-of-use sustainability in mind. Those levels of innovation are having profound changes.
I also see something externally in the market that’s happening today that’s having a big [impact]. It’s this groundswell of consumer awareness. It is really helping drive plastics recycling, especially in areas surrounding single-use plastic packaging and ocean plastic waste, which are huge problems. What’s happening today is consumers are making purchasing decisions and also brand-loyalty decisions at least in part with sustainability and social value in mind. You start to see manufacturers, brands, retailers and distribution really listening. And they’re making investments, with tangible steps toward creating plastics sustainability solutions. So that’s a big change.
This global issue with China shutting its doors to plastic scrap and now India following suit, it’s causing short-term challenges to the plastics recycling industry. We’ve seen quite a few companies that relied on exporting their plastic waste now having to resort to landfilling.
But I think this may be a silver lining because longer term, this may be the impetus for greater investment here in the USA. And you can see more innovation and investment of recycling facilities and technologies to handle plastic waste here in the United States and our own infrastructure.
What lessons have you learned about the industry? When it comes to plastic scrap, producing recycled resins and dealing with contamination, one lesson I’ve learned, and I think most everyone in the plastics processing world has learned over time, is blend, blend and blend again.
Plastic scrap, especially postconsumer scrap, generally arrives very inconsistently, on a bale-by-bale basis, or even on a truckload-by-truckload basis. But when you look at it as a whole, it’s actually fairly consistent. So, the challenge for converters who take plastic scrap and actually create new recycled materials is how do you make that material consistent? Because consistency is critical to those that are using your recycled raw materials to make new products. Blending, both preblending and postblending, can turn inconsistent plastic waste material into consistent, sustainable raw material. In the industry, we call this phenomenon being “inconsistently consistent.”
Where do you see opportunities for plastics recycling? What about challenges? Plastics are one of those things that has incredible benefits to mankind, like preserving food longer. But, obviously, plastics are also wreaking havoc in terms of the environment, and practically everyone has been made aware of this plastic pollution and single-use plastics and ocean plastic waste. There are literally billions of pounds of brand-new plastic materials being produced every year, and yet, 85 to 90 percent of all that winds up in a landfill, or worse.
I think there are incredible upcoming opportunities for all of us in the plastics recycling and sustainability sphere. Technology is probably No. 1, including, as I mentioned earlier, chemical recycling. We work with supply-chain partners that utilize incredible chemical technologies, including chemical friction, that allow us to remove and decoat all types of surface coatings from plastic—to remove exterior laminate and paints and metallics and the print and inks—and to do all of that without negatively impacting the physical properties of the polymers themselves.
These types of technologies are helping drive millions and millions of pounds of plastic recycling that were in the past too challenging to recycle.
On the flip side, the challenge with all these new technologies is making sure that they’re cost-effective, especially compared to prime virgin plastic. Because, at the end of the day, if the technology cost is too high, the end result won’t be cost-effective, and that technology won’t be deployed in any wide basis.
What is a more convincing argument about sustainability to the business world: environmental altruism or economic self-interest? In the past, I easily would have said economics for certain, and specifically [price per pound] economics. Generally speaking, sustainability has to be economically viable for it to be successful long term. That’s true for industry, and it’s also true for consumer purchasing.
But I think, today, there’s a real argument that says social brand value may ultimately have even greater importance than in the years past. Social value can really move the needle in terms of brand loyalty, which can have a direct impact on a brand’s top-line revenue and even their ability to gain shelf space. If implemented right, social value in many ways can surpass traditional price-per-pound value.
So, with consumers now making purchasing decisions in part based on a brand’s social purpose, we’re seeing social value having tremendous importance today. And that’s why you start to see leading retailers, including Walmart and Target and others, setting these very lofty plastics sustainability goals for their whole supply chain and leading brands—Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé and others—investing so heavily in sustainability and the circular economy. I think it’s because in today’s social media world, information, whether it’s good news or bad news for brand owners, spreads in minutes and can make or break a brand.
So, you’re starting to see a trend in terms of plastics sustainability where today social brand value and environmental altruism may wind up surpassing traditional price-per-pound economics that everyone focused on yesterday.
How important to you are concerns about “greenwashing” — environmental claims that don’t hold up? It’s huge. One of the important aspects about creating a circular economy is that there’s full collaboration and transparency throughout the entire supply chain. It enables you to track as a chain of custody plastic waste from source of origin throughout the recycling supply chain, turned into new raw materials, back into new products and [then] certify those, measuring carbon footprint, etc. Ensuring that you are not going to be, whether on purpose or by mistake, participating in any kind of greenwashing, which is essentially touting your sustainability, but maybe in reality they’re not as sustainable as consumers thought they might be.
What misperceptions about plastics recycling do you wish you could debunk? I would say that plastic bags—like grocery or retail bags, films or wraps—aren’t being recycled and aren’t recyclable here in North America. Because that is, in fact, completely not correct. There are increasing amounts of plastic films and bags being recycled in North America. There’s a lot of talk about plastic bag bans. We’re very active in this space. But, in reality, plastic films and bags and wraps are very much recyclable, and not just into plastic decking and plastic lumber. With today’s advances in new recycling, filtration and cleaning technologies, plastic films, bags and wraps are being converted back into clean recycled plastic resins and made back into brand-new plastic film products over and over again.
There’s a growing infrastructure here in North America to recycle millions of pounds of these plastics.
The good news is, while the consumer packaged goods industry and retailers generate lots of plastic waste—grocery bags, retail bags, stretch wrap, shrink wrap, bubble wrap and all kinds of plastic wraps—these same companies also consume and buy themselves as well as sell significant amounts of brand-new plastic trash bags, can liners, commerce shipping bags, that are all made of the same thermoplastic materials. It’s an ideal application for the circular economy!
So, the key really is, and the challenge really is, we must treat plastic waste not as waste but instead as a renewable resource that we can turn into brand-new products to increase plastic film and bag recycling on our side, at least. We focus on technologies and creating formulations that foster circular-economy collaboration.
What advice can you offer to younger people entering the industry? My advice would be to get passionate. Young folks shouldn’t jump into the plastics recycling and sustainability industries simply for their own economic reasons, although, obviously that’s important. I think, beyond that, youth should get involved because they’re passionate about plastics, they’re passionate about our planet and environment and about creating positive change in the world.
Who has served as your role model? That would definitely be my dad. My dad, before me, was a plastics pioneer himself. He taught me, more really by his actions than his words, about perseverance and hard work and overcoming obstacles in life and in business and, really importantly, about persistence and dedication: dedication to the customer, dedication to your trading partners, to the value of long-term partnerships. [He] definitely taught me a lot about thinking differently and being innovative and creating solutions where others said solutions weren’t possible. We always believe we can create solutions.
He was involved with plastics recycling for many, many years. He’s 80 years old today and happily retired.
What professional accomplishment are you most proud of? I’ve had a lot of great experiences. But if I had to single out one specific accomplishment that I’m proud of, it probably would be a plastics sustainability solution that I developed and implemented for Walmart a number of years ago.
Walmart came to us to help find a solution to their disposable plastic shipping hangers. At that point, Walmart was disposing these plastic hangers into landfills—around a billion plastic shipping hangers annually—which came in from apparel vendors from all over the world.
Disposable plastic shipping hangers were very challenging to recycle because they were made from a number of different polymers that were all mixed together, and they couldn’t be melted together. Plastic hangers were made from polypropylene and polystyrene and K-resin (styrene butadiene copolymer), which aren’t compatible in a recycling process because they melt at different temperatures. But, also, plastic containers are heavily contaminated with all types of nonplastic waste—paper, fabric, foam, tissue paper, stickers, adhesives, metals, rods, clips and hooks, all that stuff—and get all entangled together.
We designed, built and operated the plastics recycling facilities ourselves to help solve this problem for Walmart. We built a state-of-the-art plastics recycling operation. We installed hydrocyclone resin separation systems to separate polymers by specific gravity at very high speeds and with great accuracy. We installed metal- and air-classification separation systems, color sortation, all in a highly automated process with very little manual labor required.
To authenticate our work, we also measured our own carbon footprint through the entire operation, including from sourcing the material to our facilities. We verified that our carbon footprint was an 80 percent carbon footprint reduction versus comparable prime resin.
We also obtained FDA (Food and Drug Administration) compliance, as well, for the recycled plastic resins we produced from consumer-used plastic hangers. To go full circle, ultimately, we worked collaboratively with the supply chains and helped close the loop for Walmart, with product back in their stores in the lawn and garden department and other departments made entirely from Walmart plastic hangers. It was a great experience for me personally, as well. I’d probably say that’s my most enjoyable or fulfilling professional accomplishment related to plastics and sustainability.
Renewable and recyclable?
Features - Plastics Recycling magazine | Industry Advocacy
Just as materials and packaging designs evolve, so must the recycling industry to capture value from bioplastics.
We know the benefits of plastics. They often are the more sustainable option when evaluated against other materials. Reducing a vehicle’s weight by 10 percent, which often is accomplished by using plastic to replace metal components, can increase fuel economy between 5 percent and 6 percent. It takes 10 times the amount of resources to produce food compared with the plastic packaging that protects and preserves it. Plastic products used in the medical field contribute to improved infection control. But just because plastics already were the sustainable material of choice doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to find ways to improve and address the unique challenges they have.
Sustainability is important as the plastics industry evolves alongside consumer perceptions, brand owners’ understanding about the recoverability and circularity of products and packaging and supply chain sophistication related to reduced environmental impacts. A 2018 Deloitte survey found two-thirds of shoppers are willing to pay extra for sustainable products. Brand owners such as PepsiCo have made public commitments to circular visions of their plastic use (“to build a world where plastics need never become waste”). Each of these factors plays an important role in optimizing products, affecting material selection, construction and disposal. This is echoed in legislative policies at all levels of government.
Bio-based alternatives
Within the realm of material development, companies have worked to create plastics with unique functional and compositional attributes. One family of polymers that continues to rapidly grow in popularity is bioplastics. They are either bio-based, meaning they originate wholly or partly from renewable feedstock; in some way biodegradable, such as through industrial composting facilities; or bio-based and biodegradable.
As a concept, bioplastics are not new—the first man-made plastic, Parkesine, was bio-based, and Henry Ford famously used corn- and soybean-based plastics to manufacture automotive parts until World War II. But the 1990s saw increased commercialization of bioplastics.
Professionals working with these polymers have had to think about how they fit within the existing recycling infrastructure and how that infrastructure can be adapted to handle these materials.
Recycling matters
For certain bio-based plastics, recycling is a relatively simple process because many are chemically identical to traditional plastics. For example, Braskem’s I’m green polyethylene (PE) is 100 percent bio-based and behaves no differently than fossil-based PE at material recovery facilities (MRFs). Coca-Cola Co.’s PlantBottle, which is up to 30 percent bio-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET), is another example. More than 1 billion bottles have been produced with bio-based PET, and they’ve presented no problems to recyclers. But manufacturers of novel polymers should keep recycling in mind to ensure they don’t unintentionally disrupt the recycling system.
New bio-based polymers in development, including polyethylene furanoate (PEF) and polytrimethylene furandicarboxylate (PTF), have physical properties that may make them more advantageous in certain applications than other available plastics. In particular, the two bioplastics exhibit increased gas barrier properties compared with PET. However, these polymers shouldn’t be mixed with PET in large volumes because they risk becoming contaminants in MRFs that don’t use optical sorting to identify and separate plastics. For instance, Wilmington, Delaware- based DuPont Industrial Biosciences has worked to prevent recycling stream disruption by reducing the risk of contamination by these bioplastics. DuPont Industrial Biosciences won the 2017 Innovation in Bioplastics Award in conjunction with Archer Daniels Midland for work commercializing a bio-based precursor to PTF.
Bioplastics and food waste
Regardless of the extra care required to recycle some of these materials, the benefits and opportunities presented by bioplastics and bio-based polymers are considerable. Bioplastics that are industrially compostable provide unique end-of-life advantages because they can break down completely via microbial digestion in the same environment as food or yard waste. This means these products can be used to help divert food waste from landfills—food waste can represent as much as 30 percent of the volume of a landfill by weight—to more sustainable end-of-life options, such as industrial composting or anaerobic digestion.
Professionals working with biopolymers have had to think about how they fit within the existing recycling infrastructure and how that infrastructure can be adapted to handle these materials.
Other compostable products used in food service also can promote diversion. In closed-loop systems such as stadiums, airports, arenas, etc., consistent selection of compostable food service products ensures little to no contamination of the recycling streams with compostable bioplastics and no contamination of the compost stream with noncompostable plastics.
A compostable polymer isn’t limited to use in food service applications. Firstly, the market for food service ware and compostable bags is a small part of the much larger plastics industry. A company only focusing on these products limits its potential growth. In addition to being bio-based or biodegradable or compostable, these polymers have other characteristics that can be put to good use.
Engaging with recycling
A great example of a bioplastic that not negatively affecting the recycling industry is polylactic acid (PLA). PLA is an industrially compostable plastic used in a wide variety of compostable products. But companies also produce PLA products outside this space. It is used widely in 3D printing because of its lower melt point and less pungent smell than some alternatives. Companies such as Total Corbion, Gorinchem, The Netherlands, are developing noncompostable grades with increased toughness and heat tolerance for other applications, including automotive.
Still, these products need an end-of-life option other than the landfill. For PLA, mechanical recycling remains an option. As a bioplastic that has been commercially available for a long time, the recycling industry does have some familiarity with PLA. A commonly expressed concern about allowing PLA to be included in single-stream recycling is its potential impact on other polymers, most notably PET. But PLA is no longer commonly used in soft drink and water bottle formats, reducing the potential of confusion via hand-sorting. PLA can be readily differentiated from PET using near-infrared technology and also can be removed through mechanical processes such as air or float separation.
Multiple studies also have shown that its presence in the recycling stream has minimal impact on the quality of the recycled material produced. A 2016 Wageningen Food & Biobased Research study on PLA and nine other potential contaminants showed no specific threats from PLA contamination, unlike the extreme impact of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). A 2017 study from the same institute showed including PLA at 10 percent in a DKR-310 (Germany’s Green Dot program) film mixture did not negatively affect the film’s properties and increased impact strength.
A commonly expressed concern about allowing PLA to be included in single-stream recycling is its potential impact on other polymers, most notably PET.
Currently, NatureWorks, Minnetonka, Minnesota, which has commercially produced PLA for decades, has a trial project in Los Angeles where PLA is collected from secondary plastic recovery facilities. Work also is being done to develop markets for recycled PLA (rPLA) beyond creating filament for 3D printing—companies such as Bioplastic Recycling Inc., Los Angeles, aim to take rPLA and make rPLA/wood composite products, such as coffee tables and embossed signs.
As industries transition from linear to circular supply chains with a greater focus on sustainable feedstocks and multiple end-of-life options, bioplastics companies are well-positioned to respond, but so are recyclers. To do so, they will need to consider the current recycling infrastructure to ensure new opportunities are being made for bioplastics that do not come at the expense of other materials.
Just as manufacturers of new and novel polymers should consider recycling, recyclers should be responsive as well. A system that is unwilling to entertain change has to be content with the stable of polymers that exist, and that does not reflect the broader community’s interest in new and novel plastics and plastic products. To prepare for a future where more bioplastics are produced, new identification and processing technologies will need to be developed and adopted for current recyclers to continue to be able to serve in their important role. Just as materials and packaging designs evolve, so must the recycling industry to capture value from these new streams.
All of this takes consideration, communication and collaboration. We are in the early days of this process, which means the moment is now for stakeholders to thoughtfully explore these new opportunities to ensure we all advance the industry sustainably together.
The author is director of technical and regulatory affairs for the Plastics Industry Association, Washington, and the staff lead for its Bioplastics Division. Contact him at pkrieger@plasticsindustry.org.
Resin purification technology targets automotive end markets
Resin purification. A French partnership has received a patent for a process that removes impurities from postconsumer polyolefins, with the goal of making them suitable for use in automotive parts that require high-quality surface finishes.
The patent, which was issued to Compagnie Plastic Omnium, Lyon, France, three French universities and a government research organization, describes an extruder with a vacuum pump to remove impurities, such as volatile organic compounds and dissolved salts, from ground postconsumer polyolefins, preferably polypropylene (PP).
“These pollutants … are produced during the life of the polymer under the action of degradation due to aging, temperature, light and external pollutions such as engine oils or contaminations of any kind,” according to the patent. “They are present not only on the surface but also within the polymer to be recycled, trapped and/or dissolved in the entanglement of the polymer chains. This explains why simply washing the ground materials is not sufficient to remove them and why extraction is required.”
Postconsumer resins with such impurities are unacceptable for making painted automotive parts because they can contaminate paint lines, the patent states, leading to flawed finishes.
The postconsumer resin is mixed in the extruder with a liquid or mixture of liquids, such as water, liquid nitrogen or alcohol, before vacuum extraction and pelletizing, according to the patent.
Patent 10,189,970; issued Jan. 29
Postconsumer resin. A patent issued to a Mumbai company describes recycled resin formulations specifically tailored for manufacturing multilayer extruded tubes containing a high percentage of postconsumer plastic. It also covers the tubes’ manufacturing process.
Compagnie Plastic Omnium received a patent for its process to remove impurities from recycled polyolefins used in exterior auto parts. Image: United States Patent and Trademark Office
The patent, issued to Essel Propack Ltd., describes a polymer comprising between 80 percent and 95 percent recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE), with the balance consisting of one or more specialized additives to improve seal strength, resistance to environmental stress cracking and other characteristics of the recycled resin.
The finished tube consists of three layers: two layers composed primarily of recycled HDPE and a virgin HDPE layer that is in contact with the tube’s contents.
The invention could help divert postconsumer plastics from landfills and save petroleum-based raw materials, according to the patent.
Patent 10,214,639; issued Feb. 26
Pyrolysis. A process for increasing the yield of petrochemicals derived from treating mixed plastics in a pyrolysis reactor has earned a patent for Saudi Basic Industries Corp., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The plastics can include PE, PP, polyurethane, polyester, filled polymers, composites, plastic alloys and rubber.
The process incorporates a separator to dechlorinate the plastic before entering the reactor. In the reactor, the plastics are converted into a gaseous stream and a liquid stream, which undergo further processing in a hydrocracking unit, significantly boosting the yield of petrochemicals, the patent states.
Patent 10,233,395; issued March 19
Sorting.Unisensor Sensorsysteme GmbH, Karlsruhe, Germany, has patented an apparatus that sorts free-flowing bulk recyclable plastics and has a higher throughput than equipment that employs conveyor belts or an inclined feed mechanism while maintaining a similar footprint.
The system has a silo that empties onto conveyors centered inside the directing apparatus, which is a cone-shaped structure. The conveyors propel the material outward in a 360-degree arc to fall along the inner wall of the directing apparatus.
Centered under the directing apparatus is an optical-scanning device that rotates a light beam at up to 12,000 rpm, so it intersects with the falling material stream that surrounds it. The reflected light is analyzed by a process spectrometer.
A first set of containers is arrayed in a ring below the bottom edge of the directing apparatus. Compressed-air nozzles are positioned along the edge of the first set of containers. The spectrometer identifies individual fractions that should be sorted from the main stream and directs the appropriate nozzles to divert each targeted fraction into a second set of containers arrayed in a ring outside the first ring of containers.
Patent 10,245,621; issued April 2
Sustainable innovations
Features - Plastics Recycling magazine | Sustainability
The inaugural Re|focus Sustainability Innovation Awards recognize the best in end-of-life, design and materials innovations.
Tarkett was recognized for its Ethos modular carpet tile with Omnicoat Technology. Images: Tarkett
Three companies received the inaugural Re|focus Sustainability Innovation Awards from the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), Washington, for their design and materials innovations.
Circular Polymers and Broadview Group International (BGI), Brook Park, Ohio, were honored in the end-of-life category for a rotary impact separator, which separates postconsumer carpet into clean fiber and a limestone calcium carbonate granulate.
Paris-based Tarkett was recognized in the design category for its Ethos modular carpet tile with Omnicoat Technology that was created using recycled windshields and safety glass.
Dell, Round Rock, Texas, was awarded in the materials category for its Latitude 5000 Notebook, which contains a structural material for the notebook computer housing made from 50 percent recycled content by weight.
The association received 39 entries from 11 industry sectors in nine countries.
“The submissions received were creative, and these particular innovations display real promise in commercial applications that show how we can scale these new technologies,” says Kim Holmes, the association’s vice president of sustainability.
Judges included association members and members of the Society of Plastics Engineers Sustainability Division.
Circular Polymers’ California facility. Image: BGI
End-of-Life
The rotary impact separator is a patented machine BGI developed that separates postconsumer carpet into clean face fiber, clean backing fiber and calcium carbonate. The process uses mechanical force to separate face fiber, backing fiber and calcium carbonate from backing material. No washing, chemicals or high heat are needed.
The separated carpet fibers are used as feedstock for chemical recycling to produce virgin-like resin. The fiber also can be pelletized or densified and used in injection molding. The calcium carbonate is used in road construction and as a filler in rubber and plastic products.
Circular Polymers licensed the exclusive rights in North America from BGI to use the rotary impact separator. Circular Polymers opened a plant in Lincoln, California, in 2018 to process 30 million pounds of carpet per year using the separator. An estimated 5 billion pounds of carpet are sent to landfills every year in the U.S. and Canada.
“We plan to open additional plants in the U.S.,” Circular Polymers CEO David Bender says. “But incentives are important to make this economically feasible. Outside of California, only 1 to 2 percent of carpet is being recycled in the U.S.”
BGI founders, from left: Vice President of Technology Dr. Stephen Paspek, President Joe Bork, Vice President of Operations Al Schroeder and Vice President of Finance John Fischer. Image: BGI
The company opened its first plant in California because it is the only state in the U.S. that charges an assessment on all carpet sold or shipped in the state. The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) raised its assessment fee, which was established in January 2017 at 25 cents per square yard, to 35 cents per square yard effective Jan. 1. The assessment is collected by retailers from consumers and is remitted to CARE. Subsidies are paid in the form of grants to carpet recyclers, such as Circular Polymers.
While Bender declines to reveal his company’s investment in licensing the technology and building the plant, he says Circular Polymers received a $500,000 grant from CARE. It also received a $2 million loan from California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) for new equipment.
BGI spent more than $3 million to develop the technology.
“Our technology processes all carpet types: nylon 6, nylon 66, PET and polypropylene,” BGI President Joe Bork says. “Carpet recycling is done by product type because nobody wants to buy a mixed polymer product.”
The rotary impact separator shreds the carpet, and rotating paddles inside the machine beat it into pieces, removing 80 percent of the calcium carbonate. Another part of the machine further removes the calcium carbonate and adhesive. The machine separates the carpet’s face fiber from the backing fiber and cleans each fiber type independently. The machine discharges clean face fiber, clean backing fiber and calcium carbonate.
Chicago-based PureCycle Technologies, a partner of Circular Polymers, is commercializing a patented recycling process that transforms plastic feedstock into virgin-like resin. “What Circular Polymers has done with processing postconsumer carpet back into raw materials for chemical recyclers is not only revolutionary but [also] an incredible model for us all, considering the large volumes of feedstock that are being landfilled today,” says David Brenner, PureCycle chief integration officer.
Design
Tarkett, a leading manufacturer of commercial floor coverings, used a previously untapped material stream—windshields and safety glass—to develop Ethos, a high-performance polymer made of polyvinyl butyral (PVB). Combined with the company’s Omnicoat Technology, the material is used to make modular tile that is an alternative to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) soft-surface tiles. Omnicoat Technology is a proprietary coating that creates a chemical barrier that works to overcome problems with flooring substrate, such as unevenness. It is used in conjunction with Tarkett Tape to install Ethos modular carpet tile over flooring substrates that previously required time-consuming and costly testing and floor preparation.
The Ethos modular carpet tile is Cradle to Cradle Certified Silver (v3), the first U.S. modular carpet tile to achieve this level of certification. Since Ethos is designed with recycled materials and can be recycled through Tarkett’s ReStart Program, it is an example of a circular-economy product.
“The Ethos product line was an exciting development, created in response to an important customer partnership,” says Paul Evans, Tarkett vice president of research and development.
“Our development provided the performance and economics requested by the client while diverting millions of pounds of previously unusable material from landfills,” Evans says.
Materials
Dell worked with suppliers to create a structural material for its notebook computer housing made from 50 percent recycled content by weight. Dell used 20 percent postindustrial recycled carbon fiber combined with 30 percent postconsumer recycled content resin. That material is molded into a notebook computer top cover for the company’s Latitude 5000 series notebooks, which are used commercially and must meet tough durability requirements.
Megan Smalley
