RECYCLING TODAY’S PLASTICS RECYCLING CONFERENCE: Consumer Culture

Consumers of post-consumer PET provided attendees of Recycling Today’s Plastics Recycling Conference & Trade Show with information on their operations at a session titled “Consuming Passions: A Look at Recycling Resin Consuming Markets.”

Dennis Sabourin, executive director of NAPCOR (National Association for PET Packaging Resources), moderated a session that included presentations from Jean Bina of Phoenix Technologies International, Bowling Green, Ohio; Phil Cavin of Mohawk Industries, Summerville, Ga.; and Ron Sherga of Sherresults LLC, Houston. 

Cavin began by providing a brief history of Image Industries, which Mohawk purchased in 1999. Polyester carpet maker Image Industries began in 1976. In 1989, the company opened a PET recycling plan in Summerville, Ga., processing clean PET flake. However, this restriction limited the number of suppliers the company could use. In 1992, Image added a wash line and began purchasing dirty flake. Cavin said this was a “pioneering effort,” and in 1993, the company added a sporting and grinding facility and began buying baled bottles. He said the plant was built on a “worst-case scenario” because the company knew it couldn’t rely on material from deposit programs. 

Cavin said that today Mohawk has the world’s largest PET recycling plant, purchasing some 215 million pounds of baled PET bottles per year and producing 145 million pounds of carpet fiber and 20 million pounds of fiber fill per year.

Mohawk gets 63 percent of its bottles from curbside recycling programs, 35 percent from states with deposit laws and 2 percent from post-industrial sources, Cavin said, adding that the material from deposit and industrial sources is very clean and doesn’t have the waste issues associated with curbside material, which can total 29 percent, as opposed to 22 percent for deposit material and 5 percent to 10 percent for post-industrial material, for a total yield loss of 20 percent.

In the last three or four years, Cavin said Mohawk has been focused on reducing the amount of waste material that it landfills. Currently, only 7 percent of its yield loss is landfilled, though Cavin said Mohawk is working on a drying process and hopes to sell this material.

The fiber industry is among the most forgiving applications for secondary plastics, Cavin said. “A little bit of this and a little bit of that is not a big deal.”

While fiber applications have some leeway, bottle-to-bottle applications are far more rigid.

Bina provided some background on Phoenix Technologies, which manufacturers PET bottles from post-consumer material. In 1991 when Phoenix Technologies was established, the 15,000-square-foot facility had a capacity of 7 million pounds per year. In 2006, the ISO-certified facility has expanded to 100,000 square feet and is capable of producing 80 million pounds of recycled PET per year. Phoenix Technologies produces and markets LNO and NLP recycled resins and also offers toll services in palletizing, crystallizing and solid stating, according to Bina.

Phoenix Technologies’ non-food bottle grade resin, NLP, is used to package beauty products, household cleaners, trapping and automotive care products. The company can produce 40 million tons of NLP per year, Bina said.

In 1996, Phoenix Technologies began working with beverage makers to develop a FDA-approved R-PET bottle, which resulted in a letter of no objection from the FDA in 1999. According to Bina, Phoenix is not limited to a feedstock, accepting material from curbside and bottle bill programs. The material can go through any wash process and the process uses a small particle size for rapid decontamination, she added.

While demand for recycled PET is strong, Bina said that export volumes continue to have a significant affect on the supply available domestically and that the gap between supply and demand will continue to diverge as we look forward. She said the export market is attractive because suppliers often do not hear complaints from their consumers and they also often get more money for their shipments. To achieve recycled PET supply and price targets, she said, supply circles are expanding, which can lead to quality issues. Remediation technologies are evolving to achieve quality targets, Bina added.

However, Bina said that it is possible to accommodate the growth of market demand for recycled PET by continually improving wash process technology and decontamination process technology and through stakeholder collaboration.

Sherga of Sherresults looked at extending the environmental life of plastics.

According to Sherga, consumption is defined by efficiencies of use, design improvements, material decisions, operating methods and delivery methods.

He encouraged companies to look at improving their consumption or eliminating certain consumables, asking, “Can’t we be better?”

When it comes to design improvements, Sherga said, “People would be willing to embrace the use of recycled material if they just understood the story behind it.” He would like to see more collaboration among engineers, consumers, recyclers and logistic experts to ensure that a closed loop solution is achievable.

Sherga also encouraged companies to make best use of logistics and shipping, suggesting that companies sub-contract to gain a geographic advantage.

Some of the issues that prevent manufacturers and the public from embracing recycled content, according to Sherga, are a fear to lose first-to-market advantage by sharing information, thinner and lighter materials translate to cheap and fragile products and material gate keepers rarely understand recycling and recycled materials.

However, innovation is rewarded through better bottom line performance, higher median profits and better stock returns, Sherga said.

He closed by challenging attendees to look at their operations. “Take a look at each of your products and ask one simple question: Can I used recycled content and make it better?”

Recycling Today’s Plastics Recycling Conference was June 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in suburban Chicago. Next year’s conference will be June 10-12 at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Fla.