
Image courtesy of Advanced Drainage Systems Inc.
Advanced Drainage Systems Inc. (ADS) plans to close its recycling facility in Waterloo, Iowa, and shift its processing capacity to other sites.
According to a June 18 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) filing, the facility will close Aug. 17 and result in 71 layoffs.
In a statement, the company, which produces plastic pipe, chambers and other products for the stormwater and on-site septic wastewater industries, says its ongoing facility expansion in Cordele, Georgia, as well as its existing recycling facilities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, will provide sufficient capacity to continue to support its manufacturing locations as well as the growing needs of the southeastern United States.
In late January, ADS broke ground on a $30 million expansion at its Georgia recycling facility that will increase its total size to 117,000 square feet. At the time of the groundbreaking, the company said the expansion would include an on-site testing laboratory and create as many as 50 jobs.
“Recycling remains a core part of who we are and what we do,” the company says in its statement. “In fiscal 2025, we recycled over 500 million pounds of plastic, which is approximately half of our total plastic consumption. We operate six recycling facilities across the United States where we process postconsumer and postindustrial material, and we will continue to invest in the future of recycling.”
ADS is one of the U.S.’ largest plastic recyclers, specializing in polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). In its fiscal year 2024 sustainability report, the company said it purchased 540 million pounds of postconsumer and postindustrial recycled plastics during that timeframe—around 50 percent of the 1.1 billion pounds of plastic it purchased. Additionally, ADS reported that it consumed 33 percent of the pigmented recycled HDPE bottles sourced in the U.S. during that time period.
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