Bottled Water Group Touts Recycling

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), Alexandria, Va., has posted a video to YouTube and through the www.bottledwatermatters.com website that is designed to “give consumers a good look at how a PET recycling facility converts more than 2 billion PET plastic bottles each year into useful materials.”

The video, titled “Recycling Empty Plastic Bottles,” follows what happens to a PET bottle after it is collected for recycling. Portions of the video were taped at the Marglen Industries plant in Rome, Ga.

“Most people know that recycling is important, but they may not understand how the process of recycling occurs – how the empty plastic bottles get turned into many other useful objects,” says Tom Lauria, IBWA’s vice president of communications. “This video traces the path that an empty bottle travels, from a bound bale to being made into clean plastic flake that is then heated and converted to make either food-grade rPET (recycled PET) pellets, which are used to make PET containers for food, or rPET fiber which is used in pillows, mattresses and carpeting,” he adds.

“In the video, a Marglen spokesman says one of the biggest issues his recycling businesses faces is not having enough empty bottles to feed their facility,” says Lauria. “U.S. recycling rates are still too low. This video is a clear message to consumers and municipalities that more needs to be done to capture this valuable material to feed recycled material processing centers rather than feeding landfills. Bottled water containers [have] a recycling rate of 31 percent, double the rate of bottled water container recycling only five years ago.”

Marglen Industries processes some 2.5 billion PET bottles annually through a bottle washing and grinding line and extrusion equipment to produce about 90 million pounds of recycled-content PET fiber each year.

“We hope that this video will help promote recycling through a better understanding of the need for more recycled material and the useful products that can be made from empty PET bottles,” says Lauria.

“It’s also important to note that making products from recycled material uses less energy than making products from virgin materials, so using recycled materials helps manufacturers lower their carbon footprints,” he added.

The video can be found on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL_qH1ra7J0.