ACC recognizes plastics recycling innovators

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), Washington, announced the winners of the 2014 Innovation in Plastics Recycling Awards Nov. 14, 2014. The ACC says the awards highlight innovations in plastics recycling by recognizing companies and individuals who successfully bring new technologies, products and initiatives to the marketplace.

The winners of this year’s award are Geo-Tech Polymers LLC, Westerville, Ohio; GreenBlue, Charlottesville, Virginia; and QRS Recycling, St. Louis. The ACC recognized the companies for developing innovative ways to help increase the availability and quality of recycled plastics.

“This year’s award recipients—Geo-Tech Polymers LLC, GreenBlue and QRS Recycling—are helping overcome some of the hurdles needed to take plastics recycling to new levels,” says Steve Russell, ACC vice president of plastics. “Their innovations will help expand the ongoing growth in plastics recycling and make more recycled plastics available to manufacturers.”

Geo-Tech Polymers was honored for developing a patented process for removing coatings, such as ink, chrome, paint, films and labels, from used plastics prior to reprocessing. According to Geo-Tech, its process decreases “the amount of plastics that are going to landfill while increasing the number of applications” available for recycled plastics.

GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition has developed a recycling label for packaging that communicates recycling instructions to consumers. The How2Recycle Label was created in response to variations in recycling programs, unclear labeling and inaccurate recyclability claims that impeded recycling in many instances, the ACC says.

QRS Recycling has established plastics container recovery facilities (PRFs) to sort plastics that local material recovery facilities (MRFs) do not handle. QRS Recycling establishes PRFs within proximity to MRFs and equips them with sophisticated sorting, washing and grinding equipment to recover individual polymers. The PRFs provide domestic markets for plastics that often were exported and capture plastics that could otherwise require significant processing or sorting equipment, the ACC says. PRFs divert more plastics from the waste stream and provide manufacturers with high-quality postconsumer recycled resins, including PET (polyethylene terephthalate), polyethylene and polypropylene. The company also is engaged in ongoing efforts to capture PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and polystyrene, the ACC says.

The Innovation in Plastics Recycling Awards are open to all U.S. companies, individuals and government bodies (including schools) that collect or process plastics for recycling, manufacture equipment used to collect or process plastics for recycling or manufacture a new product made in whole or part from recycled plastic.