Move over Kayne and your Grammys. And you to Meryl and your Oscars.
The Association of Plastic Recyclers is out with its own awards winners. And no, before you ask, they are not giving out “APRils.”
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the inaugural participants in APR's Plastic Recycling Showcase.
Unveiled at the recent Plastics Recycling 2016 conference in New Orleans, the showcase is the brainchild of APR Technical Director John Standish.
He'll take it from here:
“What we're saying is everybody in the showcase are APR members that have recently achieved the first sale of a new technology that benefits recycling in some tangible way,” Standish said while standing near the award winners at APR's booth at the show.
“We want the second and third and fourth adopters to be aware that the technology is now commercial and all major risk factors have been addressed,” Standish said.
For the 2016 version of the showcase, APR recognized a handful of members for products introduced in 2014 and 2015. Next year's showcase will recognize 2016 entrants.
The winners, along with APR comments:
PolyClear EBM PET 5507 by Indorama Ventures Public Co. Ltd. “is a copolyester with high melt strength for extrusion blow molding and designed to produce clear, high gloss containers with and without handles that can be recycled with clear PET and offer improved drop performance.”
Autosort Flake 2.0 from Tomra Sorting GmbH “is an advanced shorting machine for purifying PET flakes” that combines color, polymer and metal recognition capabilities in a single unit.
Multi-Purpose High Density Polyethylene Cable Reel from Carris Reels Inc. “replaces wood structural panels with a material that is tougher and lighter, permitting greater re-use.” This item “creates a new category of molded product made from recycled HDPE.”
SpearRC pressure sensitive labels from Constantia Flexibles GmbH are used on Coca-Cola's Simply Beverages line of products. SpearRC is “an affordable pressure sensitive film label for PET packaging that has all the advantages of standard pressure sensitive labels with the added benefit of being fully compatible with the PET recycling process.”
Intune PP-based Olefin Block Copolymers from Dow Chemical Co. “mix segments of polyethylene and polypropylene to make a new-to-the-world polymer that is compatible with both PE and PP. ... Lower purity blends of PE and PP are limited to lower value applications due to their inherent immiscibility. Compatibilizing such blends with Intune can lead to improved property balance, increase the available supply of useable PCR, and provide access to higher value applications at a lower overall systems cost.”
APR also recognized PetStar SAPI de CV's museum and auditorium in at its food-grade PET recycling plant in Toluca, Mexico. The museum and auditorium is expected to host 20,000 visitors this year, up from about 12,000 in 2015.
“This is the first ever and we hope that this grows to be an annual event,” Standish said.
