State provides funding for recycling equipment

Jared Paben

5 years ago

Officials estimate that 20 projects receiving grants will collectively divert an additional 15,400 tons of post-industrial and post-consumer plastic from landfills each year. | ImagineStock/Shutterstock

North Carolina recently awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to help plastics recycling companies invest in new equipment.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NC DEQ) provided nearly $666,000 in recycling business development grants to 20 companies. Nine of those businesses are directly involved in processing scrap plastics:

AEIPLUS ($40,000): Company will purchase wash line equipment to clean contaminated agricultural plastics as part of the film recycling process.
Bromley Plastics ($60,000): Company will purchase a plastic shredding system to increase capacity.
Clear Path Recycling ($40,000): Company will purchase a system to reprocess material bound for landfill to recover greater amounts of recyclable plastic.
High Cube ($25,000): Company will purchase a foam densifier to expand its post-commercial expanded PS and PE recycling services.
Pelican Packaging ($40,000): Company will rebuild a plastic shredder and purchase both a horizontal baler and forklifts to expand the company’s industrial plastics recycling capacity.
Plastic Materials ($60,000): Company will purchase a larger building to increase its ability to recycle film and rigid plastic scrap materials.
RePolyTex ($30,000): Company will purchase molding equipment to manufacture plastic “plywood” sheets made from e-plastics and other mixed plastics.
Resource Material Handling and Recycling ($12,000): Company will purchase a cyclone separation machine to improve the quality of regrind.
Wellmark Plastics ($30,000): Company will purchase an optical sorter to separate and produce higher-value recycled resins.

Grant recipients are required to invest at least a 50% cash match. For this 2020 round, the grants to the companies above total $337,000, and those grant recipients plan to invest $1.41 million of their own money.

The projects above will enable an estimated 15,400 tons of post-industrial and post-consumer plastic to be diverted from landfills each year, according to NC DEQ.

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