Seven facility operators across the U.S. will receive grant funds to boost PP sortation and collection. | CalypsoArt/Shutterstock
The Recycling Partnership has delivered financial assistance to seven more U.S. MRFs through its Polypropylene Recycling Coalition.
The Coalition’s latest grant funding, announced today, will bring a total of nearly $1.6 million to the following facility operators: Baltimore County in Maryland; Cedar Avenue Recycling and Transfer Station in Fresno, Calif.; Napa Recycling in Napa, Calif.; the city of Phoenix; Recycle Ann Arbor in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Republic Services in Oberlin, Ohio; and SOCRRA in Troy, Mich.
Those entities will use the funding to enhance polypropylene (PP) sortation and recycling education efforts. The Recycling Partnership, a national organization backed by brands and focused on boosting municipal recycling, has now supported 20 processing sites via the PP initiative.
The organization estimates that through its PP grant funding to date, annual recovery of PP will grow by 22 million pounds.
“This is the type of meaningful investment all materials need to improve their packaging circularity,” Sarah Dearman, vice president of circular ventures at The Recycling Partnership, said in a press release.
PP is a resin that has been increasingly leveraged by packaging makers, but its recovery has lagged behind that of plastics such as PET and HDPE in the curbside stream. The material has been central to wider industry conversations about recyclability labeling.
By assisting MRFs on PP sortation, The Recycling Partnership’s grant program strives to allow PP materials to be accepted in curbside collection systems for more U.S. households. The group says the funding initiative over the last two years has improved recycling for 7.2 million households.
The application period for the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition’s next round of grant funding runs through the end of May.
A version of this story appeared in Plastics Recycling Update on April 6.
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