A company with plans for a plastics recycling facility in Texas now has plans to build another location in Ohio.
Freepoint Eco-Systems LLC is out with a statement indicating plans for "an advanced recycling facility in Ohio that will convert waste plastic into feedstock for use in the production of prime-quality plastic."
Freepoint indicates annual capacity for the Ohio site will be about 90,000 tons of material that would otherwise be thrown away or incinerated. An exact location was not revealed.
The company, which did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment, expects the facility to begin operating in 2013.
News of the new facility comes after Freepoint said in October it would construct its initial advanced recycling facility in Texas in a project that also involves Plastic Energy Ltd. and TotalEnergies. That location is expected to come online in 2024.
"The Ohio facility will have a significant positive impact on the environment by reducing the consumption of crude oil-derived feedstocks for prime resins, which will result in carbon left in the ground, a more circular and sustainable economy and a healthier planet Earth. Our goal is to continue to expand our advanced recycling footprint not only in the U.S., but in Europe and Asia, as demand for recycled content in plastic continues to grow," Freepoint Managing Director Jeff McMahon said in a statement.
Sustainable Plastics, a sister publication to Plastics News, noted that Freepoint and its partners use a pyrolysis technology to recycle plastics. Pyrolysis uses heat and pressure in the absence of oxygen to break down plastic into its chemical building blocks.
At the new Texas facility, 33,000 tons of post-consumer end-of-life plastic waste will be annually processed into a recycled feedstock known as Tacoil, which TotalEnergies will then convert into virgin-quality polymers, suitable even for food-grade packaging applications, at its Texas-based production units, Sustainable Plastics has reported.
The process being called advanced recycling by the project backers is also known as chemical recycling. Plastic Energy already operates two chemical recycling plants in Spain.
Freepoint Eco-Systems calls itself an affiliate of Freepoint Commodities LLC, a commodities merchant "providing supply chain management services and eco-friendly products and solutions."
TotalEnergies changed its name earlier this year from Total, one of the world's largest petroleum companies that historically has been associated with traditional oil and gas production since its founding in 1924.
The name change was designed to amplify the company's broader work in other energy, including biofuels, renewables and electricity.