Berks County recycling center will host a research project that would sort grocery bags and other unwanted flimsy plastics – paper towel packaging, food storage bags, and shrink wrap around cases of bottled water, among other things – and find markets for them. The project at TotalRecycle, an Exeter Township center, will begin after new sorting equipment is installed later this year, said Frank Sau, director of communications for J.P. Mascaro & Sons, the Montgomery County-based solid waste service company that owns the facility.
Several large national retailers are partners in the research project at TotalRecycle, including Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo. and Nestle USA. The flimsy bags and thin plastic wraps, known as flexible plastic packaging, are the fastest-growing form of packaging in the United States, with 12 billion pounds introduced in the market each year, according to Resource Recycling Systems, a Michigan recycling consultant.
TotalRecycle will produce an estimated 3,100 tons of processed flexible plastic packaging a year for uses still being researched by its retail partners, members of a research-based nonprofit called Materials Recovery for the Future. Mascaro & Sons has received $1.2 million in grants so far for the project.
Among the potential uses for the recycled packaging: fence posts, manhole covers and green building materials, according to Emily Tipaldo, director of packaging-plastics for Materials Recovery. The research comes at a crucial time in the recycling industry.
China, the largest buyer of United States recyclable materials, has halted imports of used plastics and paper this year, sparking a market crash that has seen recycling centers scrambling for new buyers, industry experts say.
About one-third of America’s recycled material goes to China, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association, a Virginia trade association of private waste and recycling companies.
China also imposed a new standard in March on the amount of contaminants – mostly unusable stuff like flexible packaging, as well as some types of paper and food-stained recyclables – on the recyclables it imports. The acceptable level changed from 5 percent to 0.5 percent, and industry experts fear that other Asian countries that buy recycled materials will adopt similarly strict standards.
“There’s a feeling among some countries that they’re being dumped on with this material from Western nations,” said Anne Germain, the association’s vice president of technical and regulatory affairs. “There’s some national pride involved that ‘Why should we be dumped on if China isn’t?’ ”
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