Casella joins Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council

The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC), St. Paul, Minnesota, has announced Rutland, Vermont-based Casella Waste Systems Inc. as its newest member. The organization notes Casella is the largest recycler and most experienced fully integrated resource management company in the northeastern United States, providing solid waste collection and disposal, transfer, recycling and organics services to more than 900,000 residential, commercial, municipal, institutional and industrial customers.

“HPRC is pleased to welcome Casella as our newest member,” HPRC Executive Director Peylina Chu says. “Casella’s mission to create value by renewing and sustaining our resources and environment complements HPRC’s goals and values. We’re looking forward to learning from their experience and collaborating on projects to advance the recyclability of healthcare plastics.”

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Casella also provides professional resource management and consulting services to over 10,000 customer locations in over 40 states nationwide, including hospitals, medical manufacturers, medical packaging companies, life sciences and pharmaceutical companies to customize resource management programs unique to the healthcare industry and their individual sustainability goals.

“Investments in infrastructure and creative resource management solutions allow us to help make the world a safer and more environmentally friendly place for current and future generations,” Casella Chairman and CEO John W. Casella says. “Today, for every metric ton of greenhouse gas we emit through our operations, we prevent 4.8 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the economy, through the recycling, energy and carbon sequestration services we provide, which enables us to help advance HPRC’s mission and goals.”

The HPRC says it currently is engaged in multiple initiatives aimed at enabling the recycling and circularity of health care plastics, including research into advanced technologies to recycle mixed-stream health care plastics; a study of reverse logistics processes for collecting, segregating and preparing health care plastic waste for transport; and design guidance to improve the recyclability of medical packaging and products.

The HPRC is a private technical coalition of industry peers across the healthcare, recycling and waste management industries that seeks to improve the recyclability of plastic products within health care. The organization adds that it explores ways to enhance the economics, efficiency and ultimately the quality and quantity of health care plastics collected for recycling.