Nicos Polymers Receives 2010 GPEC Award

Nicos Polymers Group, Nazareth, Pa., has received the 2010 Chairman’s Award from the Plastics & Environmental Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). The award will be presented at the group’s 2010 GPEC (Global Plastics Environmental Conference) event in early March in Orlando, Fla.

Nicos Polymers Group has received the award for creating what it calls a proprietary process for the removal of continuous fiber reinforcement from flexible composites, allowing for clean recovery of polymer substrate materials.

The process, originally developed for reclaiming PVC from garden hoses, also can be used for recycling industrial hoses, single-ply roofing membrane (both TPO- and PVC-based) and architectural wall coverings.

Nicos Polymers Group says it reclaims an estimated 11 million pounds of material per year though the process. That number is expected to increase as manufacturers continue to seek sustainable disposal solutions and as demand remains high for recycled materials, according to Nicos.

The Pennsylvania-based recycling company (See “Compound Interest,” Recycling Today, Dec. 2007) says it offers “the broadest array of processing capabilities under one roof in the industry, offering more customers more solutions to their challenging sustainability goals.”

Services offered by Nicos Polymers include closed-loop processing of internally generated scrap streams; the sale of regrind and reprocessed materials to meet consumer content requirements; toll processing services; processing services that include fiber separation, size reduction, pelletizing, densification, custom blending, metals and fines removal, certified product destruction and sustainability consulting.

The company estimates that it recycles 90 million pounds of post-industrial plastic scrap each year.