AERT Breaks Ground on Oklahoma Plastics Recycling Plant

Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies has broken ground on a plastics recycling plant in Watts, Okla. A ceremony honoring the event was held both in the town of Watts and at the new plant site on March 14th.

The new facility, funded and developed with support from the Cherokee Nation and the State of Oklahoma, will reclaim post-industrial plastic materials for use in the company’s building products. A.E.R.T. will retrofit the existing site, property where a large hog feed lot and finishing facility once operated, into a plant that will clean, process, analyze and reformulate polyethylene plastics.

Oklahoma Secretary of Transportation Phil Tomlinson presented Joe Brooks, AERT’s chief executive officer, with the Governor’s Award for the company’s major investment in the state’s growing economy and its commitment to a lasting partnership with the State of Oklahoma. The new facility will be designed to LEED standards and will be a national example of sustainable innovation and green reclamation.

While the company held a groundbreaking ceremony, according to a contact with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, the company has yet to submit several building permits, which it needs to have turned in before construction begins.

The source notes that the company is looking to actually break ground on the project by April 1, 2008.