Backboard scores with recycled resin
SUSSEX, WIS. — Children may learn about recycling in science class, but now, in after-school basketball games, those lessons are put into practice.
Huffy Sports Co. of Sussex is marketing a basketball backboard made from 100 percent recycled plastic.
Today, about 77 percent of the 44-inch, regulation-size backboards made by Huffy are made from 100 percent recycled plastic, both post-consumer and post-industrial. These boards, the Eco-Composite brand, account for 88 percent of the company's backboard sales.
``It took several years to develop,'' said Randy Schickert, vice president of engineering. ``It's corporate responsibility, it has marketing appeal and it takes care of waste. We realized the risk of investing time and money in an area that was relatively unexplored.''
Schickert said recycled-content backboards will replace fiberglass, graphite and blow molded products now on the market.
Huffy and Composite Technologies Corp. of Dayton, Ohio, first developed a recycled-content backboard two years ago. That product, the Tuff Shot-brand backboard, used compression molded Polymer Fiber Matrix materials, including plastic and glass fibers.
CTC, which buys recycled plastic from brokers, also compounds and does in-mold graphics.
Huffy and CTC developed the Eco-Composite product last year. It weighs about 10 pounds and is about three times as strong as fiberglass backboards, according to Schickert.
Close to 92 million PET 2-liter soda bottles will be recycled this year to make the backboards, according to Huffy. CTC also uses milk jugs, car bumpers and other plastics.
The recycled-content backboards cost the same as other Huffy backboards.
SPE honors Houston for collection service
HOUSTON — Houston received the Society of Plastics Engineers' National Recycler of the Year award for 1996.
``The city of Houston has received this year's award for its automated garbage-collection service,'' said Dennis Denton, chairman of SPE's recycling division. ``This service recycles plastic and uses the plastic material collected from Houston's curbside recycling program to manufacture the city's recycling containers.''
The containers are 50 percent post-consumer plastic.
Any city, company or government institution was eligible for the award from the Brookfield, Conn., organization.