A new partnership between the city and Hefty could help Tucsonans more easily dispose of hard-to-recycle plastics. The program is an expansion of a pilot project that the department has been running since 2022, which allows Tucsonans to recycle typically hard-to-recycle plastics, and divert waste from landfills., said Alyssa Tarpley, a spokeswoman for the city’s Environmental and General Services.
“It was originally in partnership with ByFusion, and now we’ve exceeded our limits with that,” Tarpley said. “So we’re partnering with Hefty ReNew because the city of Tucson residents were just really positively receptive to this program.” The initial pilot program, aimed to reduce the amount of single-use plastic waste in landfills by sending Tucson’s hard to recycle plastics to ByFusion Global Inc, where it would then be turned into usable building materials. There was just one problem.
“Byfusion can process about 10 tons a month, and we were actually collecting about double that,” said Christina Polsgrove, a city spokeswoman. “So I was discussing the ByFusion program with a colleague, and he mentioned Hefty reduce.” Similar to Tucson’s plastic waste reduction program, Hefty ReNew collects hard-to-recycle plastics and routes them to qualified end markets that transform the plastics into building products, construction materials and plastic lumber.