Kickstart: Making pipes on site

If you're near Bartow, Fla., you can check in on a new development in plastic pipe production. Australia's Tubi Ltd. has launched modular pipe production on land leased from customer Mosaic Co., producing 500-foot lengths of pipe used in phosphate mining wastewater systems.

Tubi's patented "mobile modular extrusion system" allows the company to turn out pipe right on a job site, which reduces logistics by nearly eliminating shipping issues. Catherine Kavanaugh wrote about it for PN.

The mobile extrusion plants can be packed onto flatbed trucks and hauled to project sites in 72 hours to manufacture high density polyethylene pipe for a wide range of infrastructure projects, Tubi USA officials said.

In addition to two mobile plants in Bartow, Tubi has another plant in operation in Odessa, Texas, and will soon open one in Tucson, Ariz.

It's one thing to say that you're using "ocean-bound" plastic for your products. It's something else to actually hire a boat captain and crew to collect waste plastics to ensure your material actually has been rescued from the waters.

Boca Raton, Fla.-based 4ocean Plastic is about to launch its first product, an iPhone case, using the plastic collected by its crews along oceans, rivers and coastlines seven days a week.

The company says it follows a "strict documentation process that allows it to trace each pound of trash back to its source," our sister paper Sustainable Plastics writes.

4ocean also is certified by outside third parties.

As SP Editor Karen Laird recently wrote, a lack of transparency by independent companies complicates the entire recycling story for consumers and governments tracking waste issues.

Consider the simple retail shop hanger. They're simple, typically made of plastic and often tangled with other hangers when you try to grab just one thing off the rack.

Now recycler UBQ is also working with hanger maker Malnetti to make them greener.

Malnetti, which supplies retail hangers to Old Navy, Kohl's, Ralph Lauren and Levi's, is making garment hangers supplied by UBQ Materials Ltd. UBQ, an Israel-based company, converts household waste that would normally go to landfills into a sustainable plastic.

"It is easy to overlook the impact of a hanger, but when we zoom out, we understand that hangers are the common denominator across all brands, across the globe," Jack Bigio, co-founder and CEO of UBQ Materials Israel, said in a news release.

UBQ currently operates a pilot plant in Israel but is eyeing expansion in the U.S.