{"id":127010,"date":"2023-05-24T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=127010"},"modified":"2023-05-17T14:40:53","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T12:40:53","slug":"recycling-giant-waste-management-sees-future-in-film-recovery-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/recycling-giant-waste-management-sees-future-in-film-recovery-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycling giant Waste Management sees future in film recovery \u2013 USA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Plastics are just a small fraction of the recyclables collected and processed by Waste Management Inc., and film is just a small fraction of those plastics. But plastics, including film, have value, and the nation\u2019s largest solid waste management company wants to up its game in that market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To help propel the Houston-based company in the film recycling arena, Waste Management recently took a controlling interest in Avangard Innovative\u2019s U.S. film recycling operations in Waller, Texas, near Houston, that were then renamed Natura PCR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at plastics for WM, especially on the recycling side, it\u2019s only about 5 percent of the material we collect every day in our customers\u2019 bins. But it represents about 40 percent of the value, and it also represents nearly 100 percent of the conversations we have,\u201d said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Films have long been the scourge of MRFs, which have historically relied on equipment call screens at the beginning of the sortation process. This equipment, sometimes called disc or star screens, are actually horizontal spinning shafts that initially separate paper and cardboard from heavier recyclables such as metal, rigid plastics and even glass in some cases. Mounted onto the shafts are discs that allow paper to flow over while containers drop down between openings between the shafts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an approach that\u2019s both effective for most of the recycling stream but also essentially thwarts collection and sortation of film through the typical MRF. That\u2019s because films tend to get caught up and wrap around the shafts, building up to a point where employees have to shut down the entire line and go in to manually cut out the film that\u2019s clogging up sortation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some MRFs also employ what is essentially a giant vacuum cleaner to siphon off lightweight films from the rest of the recyclables before they can cause problems on the sortation line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With today\u2019s focus on plastics and their role in society, as well as their unwanted presence in the environment, there\u2019s never been more interest in recycling rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For plastic film, they are minuscule at about 2 percent. This compares with recycling rates of just under 30 percent for both PET and high-density polyethylene bottles. Even those higher numbers for rigid containers routinely get slammed by plastic critics, and industry insiders admit they have to do better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plastics are just a small fraction of the recyclables collected and processed by Waste Management Inc., and film is just a small fraction of those plastics. But plastics, including film, have value, and the nation\u2019s largest solid waste management company wants to up its game in that market. To help propel the Houston-based company in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"With today\u2019s focus on plastics and their role in society, as well as their unwanted presence in the environment, there\u2019s never been more interest in recycling rates","footnotes":""},"categories":[17143],"tags":[10416,13661,11966,10453],"supplier":[20599,3792],"class_list":["post-127010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-films","tag-plastics","tag-recycling","supplier-avangard-innovative","supplier-waste-management-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127010"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=127010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}