Plastics News has published our annual ranking of North American recyclers in today's print issue, so let's take the opportunity to look at the number behind the ranking.
In print, we rank the top 25 companies, but online we've got data for 226 companies.
That's three less than last year.
178 of the companies reprocessed a total of 8,873.64 million pounds of plastic in 2012, for an average per company of 49.85 million pounds.
Last year, 165 of the companies reprocessed a total of 7,842.58 million pounds of plastic, for an average of 47.53 million pounds.
Three companies moved into the top 25 this year:
- Green Line Polymers of Waterloo, Iowa, moved up 32 spots to No. 9.
- Delta Plastics of the South LLC of Little Rock, Ark., moved up 158 spot to No. 17.
- Engineered Recycling Co. LLC of Charlotte, N.C., moved up 5 spots to No. 25.
There are 6 new companies to the ranking this year:
- UpCycle Polymers LLC of Brighton, Mich.
- Perry Poly Grinding of Graham, N.C.
- Bosgen Inc. of Newton, Mass.
- CarbonLite Industries LLC of Los Angeles.
- David's Plastic Trading Inc. of Woodside, N.Y.
- Arizona Pacific Plastics of Phoenix
We would like to welcome back three companies to our ranking:
- Arrotin Plastic Materials of San Bernardino, Calif.
- Intercontinental Export Import Inc. of Columbia, Md.
- Mid Continent Plastics Inc. of Munfordville, Ky.
Want more information? Check out our print edition or go online.
In addition to what we publish, we also offer the full rankings data for sale in the Plastics News Store.
If you work for a company that is missing from the ranking, we would like to include you next time. The listing is free. Just send a note to Hollee Keller at [email protected] or mail your information to Plastics News, Editorial Department, 1725 Merriman Road, Akron, Ohio 44313.
Thanks to Lisa Pyles for today's peek behind the data – and to Lisa Pyles and Hollee Keller for their research on this year's project.