Alaskan recycled plastic lumber program also combats ocean debris

A new localized effort in Alaska recycles post-consumer plastic, marine debris and industrial plastic waste into lumber that could be used for infrastructure or industrial work.

Anchorage, Alaska-based engineer Patrick Simpson hopes the project, which won a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency through the Small Business Innovation Research program, will give remote Alaskan communities a resource to recycle plastics locally.

"Alaska has a lot of coastline, so we accumulate a lot of marine debris," Simpson told Plastics News in an interview. "A significant amount of that marine debris is plastics. It comes from the fishing industry in the way of nets, lines and buoys and also things that are tossed overboard from processing ships at sea.

"Although it's a horrible problem, there's not a lot of [ocean plastic waste] available in terms of volume," Simpson said.

As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others invest more money in marine debris collection in Alaska, "that's going to be a growing material stream," he added.

NOAA's Marine Debris Program has focused on Alaska's coastline, which is longer than the rest of the United States', to remove more than 900 metric tons of debris since 2006.

As a former second-generation fisherman, Simpson said, he's seen the impact plastics have on beaches and coastlines in Alaska.

"I'm hopeful that the combination of programs like ours and the increased funding will … not only allow us to utilize it but to eliminate it," he said.

Simpson started a post-consumer plastic collection program in Soldotna, Alaska, last year and began receiving post-industrial waste from oil and gas drilling in North Slope, Alaska.

Oil companies have given the program "hundreds of thousands" of pounds of plastic, Simpson said, from high-grade high density polyethylene caps, or "tread protectors," from the well pipes that oil travels through. Those caps currently make up 80 percent of the lumber material, while 15 percent is post-consumer, and the final 5 percent is plastic ocean waste.

The material is still "not entirely consistent," Simpson said, as the post-consumer and ocean waste is made up of a mix of PET, polypropylene and PE, including film. "We're using the best material we've got in that ratio," he said.

The lumber, branded as "Grizzly wood" because "it's rough and tough like Alaskans," he said, is currently being used to make garden boxes and picnic tables, which "aren't requiring a high level of consistency."

To use the lumber in decking or other infrastructure uses, the program will need to seek "third-party testing to demonstrate stability," Simpson added.

Currently, the recycling operation is run from a 53-foot trailer, which houses a shredder and an extruder, designed and built by American Cierra Plastics in Auburn, N.Y., which processes about 3 1/2 pounds of material a minute, he said, adding it could process up to 6 pounds.

Anchorage-based freighting company American Fast Freight has purchased some of the recycled plastic lumber to hold freight in place on a trailer.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently purchased 18 10-foot pieces of lumber to use in stream coastline restoration.

Pressure-treated lumber can leach chemicals into the environment, Simpson said, so the wood lumber that ADFG uses "deteriorates pretty quickly. … They're doing a lot of maintenance and hoping this will eliminate some of that."

Grizzly wood could be a good fit for sign posts, he said, since it would stand up to Alaska's extreme temperatures and precipitation.

With just $30,000 in sales since its inception, the recycling program's team has been assembling picnic tables and garden boxes for its local customers.

After establishing "feasibility" with the first EPA grant, Simpson said, he's applied for another grant, a "phase two," which would supply two years of funding — "enough money for us to build this mobile plastic unit and demonstrate it in a couple of communities here in Alaska."

The program would then begin a "compensated collection program" where it would purchase plastic waste from local communities to turn into lumber.

Since "much of Alaska isn't on a road system," the mobile recycling facilities would provide locally produced products from the community's own collected plastic waste.

Simpson hopes to create mobile recycling units on the Kenai Peninsula, in Anchorage, and Fairbanks, Alaska.