Novolex's Indiana plant proves that bags can be, and are recycled every day

North Vernon, Ind. — There are plenty of myths and misunderstandings floating around when it comes to plastic bag and film recycling. But most of those myths are quietly busted all day long in a small southeastern Indiana town.

There is the myth that plastic bags can't be recycled. Or that they can't be recycled more than once. There is the myth that there is no value to recycled plastic or plastic bags as a recyclable material and even the myth that recycled-content plastics are inferior to virgin.

Novolex's recycling and bag-making facility, under its Hilex Poly brand in North Vernon, is a place perhaps the rest of the country — particularly California — could look to for a dose of myth-busting before banning plastic bags altogether.

MYTH: Plastic bags can't be recycled

Environmental groups, most notably the group leading the charge to ban plastic bags in California, Californians Against Waste, typically throw out the statistic of 5 percent. Only about 5 percent of plastic bags get recycled, goes the claim, as though a low recycling rate somehow proves a physical impossibility of recycling.

It's not that used plastic bags, wraps and film can't be recycled, it's that so many curbside programs can't take them because the municipal systems don't have the right equipment, said Novolex Senior Director of Sustainability Phil Rozenski, who also puts estimates the plastic bag recycling rate at closer to 15 percent.

The lack of curbside collection is actually good for Novolex and the North Vernon plant, where 20 million to 24 million pounds of film is collected and recycled every year, but not great for recycling rates overall.

According to the most recent National Postconsumer Plastic Bag & Film Recycling Report, complied by Moore Recycling Associates Inc. for the American Chemistry Council, film recycling is on the rise, albeit slowly. In 2014, that market segment saw a 3 percent increase in recycling, totaling 1.17 billion pounds. Overall, plastic film recycling is up by nearly 80 percent over the past decade.

The biggest barrier to recycling, Rozenski says, is actually consumer reuse.

“The greatest competition I have for recycling materials is that consumers reuse about 50 to 60 percent of the bags out there in their homes,” he said.

MYTH: Plastic bags can't be recycled more than once

The sign in front of the closed-loop recycling facility on 2nd Street in North Vernon is quite literal: Bag 2 Bag.

Rozenski said they often see recycled-content film, and even Hilex Poly recycled-content bags, having a “homecoming” on the loading dock. Bags and other film and sheet come into the facility baled, are processed back into pellets and then back into bags on the other side of the factory. Sometimes the resin is still warm from recycling as it into the hopper to begin another new life as a plastic bag.

Though it has been slow going, consumers are coming to know T-shirt bags are recyclable, Rozenski said. But there is some concern that the thicker, multiple-use bags encouraged by some bag ban and fee ordinances may discourage reuse and recycling.

“What keeps me up at night is the 100-use bag idea,” he said. “Regarding reusable bags, people use them less and less — a fraction of the times they are meant for. We know when people are forced to use non-woven polypropylene reusable bags, the after-use is only about 15 times,” as opposed to the 100 times for which they are rated.

“When I talk to environmentalists, they say ‘That's not me, I use mine 100 times.' But we're not talking about environmentalists, we're talking about the public at large and these bags [non-woven PP] aren't reusables to them. And they are not getting recycled. Last year we imported more than half a billion and that is increasing.

“Reusable bags have quickly become the new disposable item,” Rozenski said.

MYTH: There is no value to recycled film

“There's a belief that there is not value in recycling plastic bags,” Rozenski said. “That is a myth. There is value.”

The company can't keep up with demand for recycled-content products, he said, and works with outside providers to beef up its bale deliveries. The North Vernon plant gets a lot of grocery store and retail film, a combination of low and high density polyethylene, Rozenski said, while linear LDPE stretch film tends to go a sister plant in Wisconsin, which can handle more diverse resins.

With the October 2015 acquisition of Wisconsin Film & Bag Inc., Novolex got not only a custom film and packaging conversion plant and 175 more employees, it also got a recycling plant near Shawano, Wis.

Lessons learned and processes that were innovative early in the Indiana plant's life are being applied in Wisconsin, Rozenski said.

All the bales are labeled so their origins can be tracked and the stores collecting the film can be mentored by Hilex on collection efforts, he said. Recyclers need a consistent film source and a consistent process to get a consistent product. The process can be adjusted for different stores' needs and different resins, Rozenski said, but the relationships with collectors are most important to maintain.

“Recycling is really about relationships,” he said, from collection to customer.

Even in-house recycling has value in North Vernon. About 10 percent of every single-use bag is cut out when it's made. Those cutouts go back into the recycling process on the post-industrial line.

“Like cookie dough — roll it back out and make another cookie,” Rozenski says.

MYTH: Recycled-content is inferior to virgin

“I understand where a lot of the myths come from,” Rozenski said, and the long-standing myth that recycled-content plastics are inferior to virgin is one he particularly understands. Thirty years ago, brown or gray recycled resin was referred to as “off spec” material in the plastics industry and beyond. Like a child's watercolors, mixing all the colored plastic in the recycling process results in a muddy-colored final product.

Buyers who wanted a specific color were — and still are — hamstrung into using virgin resin, which helped perpetuate the myth that virgin was somehow “better” plastic.

A completely white bag plastic bag can only contain 10 to 15 percent recycled plastic without impacting the color, Rozenski said, and the rest is virgin white resin. Other colors may be able to take a little more recycled content in the mix before the final color is affected, but virgin content will still be high — well over 50 percent.

But when the customer can be happy with a gray or light brown bag? The recycled content will be “a whole lot more,” he said. “And then everybody wins.”