Multi-material recyclers see opportunities in plastics

Las Vegas — Multi-material recyclers are seeing plenty of opportunities in plastics recycling.

Officials from several recycling firms tackled the plastics market April 4 at ISRI 2016, a scrap recycling event in Las Vegas organized by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. Among them was Sunil Bagaria, president of GDC International Inc., a recycler of metal, plastics, paint and paper in New Brunswick, N.J.

“People say that plastics are too much of a problem for a metal scrap yard,” Bagaria said. “But you already have the facility and the machines, and plastics will attract more deliveries by contractors.

“You can use the same vehicles, and your volume of metal also will increase for a low capital requirement,” he added. “Everyone hates change, but change means progress.”

Bagaria named PVC siding, conduit, pipe, fence and window profiles as potential scrap sources, along with polypropylene supersacks, polyethylene stretch film, pallets, drums, buckets and crates and PET strapping.

Challenges to using plastic scrap, according to Bagaria, are identifying and sorting the material, avoiding mixing plastic with metal in baling and finding indoor storage needed for plastics. Unlike metals, plastics can't be stored outside, he explained.

And although recycled plastics prices currently are down — as are metals prices — the addition of new polyethylene capacity in North America is a good sign for future plastics usage, Bagaria added.

Mylinda Jacobsen — purchasing manager with high density PE recycler and compounder Envision Plastics Industries LLC in Reidsville, N.C. — added some items to Bagaria's list, including toter bins, park benches, shade balls, playground equipment and flower pots.

“Just make sure you remove the wheels and metal from the toters — and that you know who owns the crates” she said.

Jacobsen added that “there's a lot of value in plastics that can add to your bottom line.” Based on processing volume, Envision ranked as North America's 15th largest plastics recycler in a recent ranking compiled by Plastics News.

John Aspland has owned and operated Adirondack Plastics & Recycling Inc. — a plastics and paper recycling firm in Argyle, N.Y. — for 25 years. He still sees possibilities in plastics work.

“We go to companies like Hasbro and Chobani and then we sort, grind and sell,” Aspland said. “We get as close to the end user as possible.”

Adirondack does only post-industrial work and has recycled plastic items ranging from syringes that were being landfilled to polystyrene trays used in battery production. The firm also has salvaged PS interiors from refrigerators and polycarbonate and acrylic sheet from soda machines.

“You need to know what you're getting and you need to have an end market,” Aspland explained. “But you can find a market in anything.”

Recycling veterans Jonathan Cohen and Joe Clayton identified several potential markets for firms looking to access plastic scrap. Cohen is co-founder and president of Phoenix-based Generated Materials Recovery Inc., an industrial metal, paper and plastic recycler that has done plastics work for 20 years. Clayton is vice president of sales for electronic materials recycler Metal Recycling & Processing Co. Inc. of Hunt Valley, Md.

“Plastics isn't one thing — it's 1,000 different things,” Cohen said. “You have to understand what it is, where it's collected from and what value it has.”

Clayton's firm does a lot of work with metal circuit boards — but he's come across suppliers that were throwing out the HDPE containers that circuit boards were shipped in.

Plastic scrap applications cited by Cohen and Clayton included:

• Agriculture: PE drip hose and drip tape and agricultural film used with strawberries and other crops. Cohen cautioned that used ag film can contain up to 50 percent dirt, and that “dirt and water aren't something someone wants to pay for.”

• Automotive: Bumpers and gas tanks are two primary sources of plastic scrap, Clayton said. Ten to 15 percent of smaller plastic components that often are scrapped have “negative economics,” he explained. He also described auto shredder residue as “the largest stream of untapped plastics in the country,” one that eventually could supply as much as 11 billion pounds of raw material per year.

• Construction and demolition: PE buckets, drums and crates as well as PVC siding and windows. Window-grade PVC “is a desirable grade,” Cohen said, but scrappers should be able to deal with nails. He also reminded interested firms that PVC can't be mixed with other plastic products in recycling streams.

• Distribution: PE stretch film “is used in most distribution sites around the world,” Cohen said. “It's clear and easy to access. It's the white gold of the plastic recycling market. It was still in demand even during the recession.”

• Electronics: polycarbonate/ABS computer housings and high-impact polystyrene TV housings. “Electronics recycling already is selling steel and aluminum to you, and they're looking for outlets to move plastic as well,” Clayton said. “They don't have warehousing space like a scrap yard does.”

• Food and beverage packaging: Scrap items in this sector include HDPE drums, syrup jugs and milk crates. “By necessity, this kind of packaging needs to be local, because of logistics and quality concerns,” Cohen explained. “It's a growing area of recycling and it's not going to go away.”