Rate of recovery: Attendees gather in the Chicago area for conferences that address paper and plastic recycling

Recycling Today, August, 2006

In an adjacent meeting room, attendees of Recycling Today's Plastics Recycling Conference & Trade Show assembled to hear presentations on a variety of issues affecting the recovery and recycling of plastics.

SENT PACKING. Capturing more bottles at large concerts and sporting events could be a key strategy in increasing recycling rates for PET and HDPE, according to Leslie Lukacs of SCS Engineers.

Lukacs addressed attendees of the inaugural Recycling Taday's Plastics Recycling Conference & Trade Show as part of a panel discussing methods for collecting more plastic for recycling. She discussed the efforts of the Venues and Special Events Recycling Council (VSERC), which sponsored a venues recycling bill that was signed into law in California by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September 2004. The law requires large venues and event facilities to submit plans for solid waste reduction and to report on the progress of their recycling programs to their local governments.

Lukacs pointed out several challenges to recycling at large events, including the large amounts of single-use items and the high percentage of food discards and resulting contamination. However, controlling what is sold at these venues and events is a key step in controlling what kind of material is collected for recycling, she said.

In addition, Tamsin Ettefagh of Envision Plastics addressed attendees on the Association of Postconsumer Plastics' (APR) efforts to increase recycling rates.

Ettefagh identified rural areas, multi-family homes and office/retail commercial buildings as under-collected areas.

She also outlined several potential projects the APR is considering for 2006, including a "piggy back" collection with paper, a convenience store and out-of-home collection program and stadium/venue collection.

In addition to increasing the recovery of post-consumer plastics, sorting the material also can prevent challenges for recyclers.

SORTING STATIONS. Automation and technology are gaining ground in the difficult race to make the recycling of collected mixed plastics possible, according to a trio of panelists.

In a session titled, "On the Job: Sorting Trends, Challenges and Applications," moderator Lisa White of SP Recycling Corp., Atlanta, offered a presentation on the challenges faced by processors of plastic containers collected through municipal recycling programs.

Single-stream collection "decreases the cost of collection, plain and simple," White acknowledged. The challenge, though, is to then separate materials to produce quality shipments of both paper and plastic.

White described some of the newest sorting equipment as "automated human eyes with arms," and noted that SP Recycling has been using optical equipment made by MSS (a subsidiary of CP Manufacturing, National City, Calif.) to increase its sorting accuracy while reducing the use of manual labor.

Another recycler of municipal materials that has made a similar commitment is TFC Recycling, Chesapeake, Va. The company's Chris Pulley remarked, "TFC has made a total commitment to optical sorting."