The new NERC report includes 15 new and 10 expanding facilities processing recycled plastics in North America. | Warut Chinsai/Shutterstock
The North American plastics recycling sector is poised to add over 1 billion pounds of annual capacity, according to a group charting processing growth.
Greg Janson of plastics reclaimer QRS Recycling knows all too well what happens when material suppliers aren’t informed about load quality.
As Loop Industries pushes forward its depolymerization method on multi-layer packaging, the startup is also highlighting the potential of recycling opaque PET containers and textiles.
MBA Polymers’ U.K. and China operations have been sold to a German equity fund, and the plastics reclaimer’s Austrian branch has been bought out by its longtime co-owner.
Credit: Riverview Photography
A viable end market is crucial to effective materials recovery, and in the plastics realm, those downstream uses are growing increasingly diverse.
RES Polyflow’s Michael Dungan says fluctuating oil prices and developments in Asia will continue to affect pyrolysis companies, but he thinks a bigger issue may be a regulatory landscape that he believes is dated and detrimental to technology adoption.
A major end user of recovered PET boosted its revenues last year, as it works to expand its recycled-plastic fiber brand and move into new recycling markets.
A joint-venture plastics recovery facility in Maryland will suspend operations in the coming days, citing challenges in the post-consumer plastics industry and pointing to a need to upgrade its equipment.
A bale of plastics No. 3-7. Source: Association of Plastic Recyclers.
The idling of a Baltimore-area plastic recovery facility is the kind of challenge that’s expected in an innovative project showcasing a still-developing business model, according to a financial backer.
Operators of materials recovery facilities are increasing their labor forces and installing additional sorting equipment in response to Chinese restrictions on scrap imports. As companies increase sortation efforts to create a higher-quality output, attention is also turning to the domestic plastics processing market.