Tampa, Fla. — The conference room walls at Commercial Plastics Recycling Inc. are covered with maps of the exhibit floors at the Orange County Convention Center in nearby Orlando just two months prior to the start of NPE2024.
The papers show which exhibitors are producing items on the show floor, the type of material being used and the volume of production. They will provide the guide to help CPR and its partners — including equipment suppliers Waima and Conair — toward a target of recycling 100 percent of the plastics at NPE, May 6-10.
"Our team, the team from Waima and the team from Conair have been working on this plan since the 2018 show," CPR founder Ben Benvenuti said during an interview at the company earlier this year. "We've been getting ready and making sure that any of the tweaks that needed to be made have been made."
CPR has overseen recycling for exhibitors at NPE since North America's largest plastics trade show moved to Orlando in 2012. (The convention center has its own recycling operations for attendees) It has also continually upgraded its operations.
The service is free for all exhibitors.
The first year in Orlando, CPR shipped finished products from the show to its headquarters operations in Tampa, but that wasn't efficient, so in 2015 it began on-site grinding. Benvenuti said.
It added more on-site recycling operations for NPE2018 and the show's recycling rate topped 80 percent.
CPR, with three locations in the U.S., specializes in post-industrial plastics and items that are more difficult to recycle, such as municipal water lines that have been in the ground for 30 years or mixed-material medical products.
Benvenuti opened the company in 1996. He said he "would have loved" to provide recycling during NPE shows in Chicago, but it didn't make sense. Once the show moved to Florida, CPR was quick to get involved.
During NPE2024 it will have 20 of its full-time staff and another 60 temporary workers at the show floor.
"As you can see, it's a lot of planning and preparation to get all this down," he said. "We want to do it right for plastics, for NPE and for us."
