Hilex Poly Schedules Open House

Hilex Poly, Hartsville, S.C., a manufacturer of plastic bag and film products and the operator of plastic bag recycling facilities, has announced that it will officially open its newly expanded plastic bag recycling facility in Indiana on January 7, 2010.

The company says it will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the opening of its newly expanded North Vernon, Ind., recycling facility on that day. Local political and civic leaders, media, and other community members have been invited to the ceremony.

Hilex broke ground for the recycling plant in the fourth quarter of 2004 and simultaneously initiated the Bag-2-Bag® closed loop recycling program. In partnership with retail and grocery stores, Hilex provides an avenue for consumers to return used plastic bags and other household film scrap for recycling through at-store collection bins.

“Stores across the nation collect this valuable recyclable material and use reverse distribution innovations to economically move the bags back to distribution centers where they are baled and then shipped back to Indiana for processing,” says Hilex Poly in a news release.

Once the bales of plastic arrive at Hilex Poly facility, they are shredded, washed and compounded into recycled polyethylene pellets. The post-consumer pellets are part of Hilex’s reinvention of an existing manufacturing process allowing old bags to be reused to make new bags – the Bag-2-Bag system.

“As Hilex focuses on developing products that utilize more recycled content, we ask the public to continue to reuse their free plastic bags; recycle those that are not reused and support retailers that use recycled content bags - a proven enhanced alternative to recycled paper and virgin plastic bags,” says Stan Bikulege, CEO of Hilex Poly.

“Hilex is committed to work with our customers and the consumer to develop new products and processes that reduce the use of our natural resources,” he adds.

Bikulege says the significant expansion moves Hilex Poly closer to its voluntary initiative to manufacture multi-use plastic bags with 40 percent recycled content.

Since Hilex Poly began the Bag-2-Bag recycling program, the company has placed some 30,000 recycling bins in grocery stores across the country.

Expanding Hilex Poly’s innovative Bag-2-Bag program has paved the way for consumers not only to return used plastic bags to participating retail stores, but also an avenue to recycle other home items such as towel, tissue and bottle overwrap, newspaper bags, dry cleaning bags and other clean home polyethylene films. Hilex is actively researching adding new streams of recyclable plastics, such as industrial stretch film, into the bag manufacturing process in an effort to divert an even greater volume of plastic from the waste stream.

“The expansion of the recycling facility is a direct result of the tremendous growth of plastic bags and wraps being returned to participating retailers for recycling,” says Mark Daniels, VP of Marketing and Environmental Affairs for the company.

Hilex Poly operates nine located manufacturing facilities in the United States. More information on the company and its plastic bag recycling program is available at www.hilexpoly.com.