Fifty organizations signed a letter to PureCycle requesting the company stop construction on a plastic sorting facility in Winter Garden, Florida.

Fifty nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from across the United States have sent a letter to PureCycle Technologies Inc. CEO Dustin Olson, along with CEOs of other PureCycle partners, requesting that PureCycle abandon its plans for a plastic sorting facility in Winter Garden, Florida.

PureCycle Technologies, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, announced plans last fall to open a plastic recycling prep facility in Winter Garden that will sort and process polypropylene (PP) to be turned into the company’s "ultrapure" recycled PP resin at its sites in Ironton, Ohio, and Augusta, Georgia.

According to the letter, which was sent Sept. 6, co-signers are concerned about the “harms and potential risks” the facility might have on its surrounding community.

“A plastic trash sorting facility would significantly increase truck traffic for deliveries and pickup of plastic waste material,” the letter states. “The plastic trash trucks are likely to travel on the same roads as school buses delivering children to Maxey Elementary School, which is just two minutes away. The damage done to city roads by truck traffic would be an additional cost to city taxpayers, a burden on commuters and harmful for the surrounding homeowners. The community could face additional economic harm through decreased property values. The possibility of a truck producing litter, bad odor and harmful emissions in a residential area is high.

“There are also safety concerns for the residents of the surrounding area. Plastic waste is flammable, and storage of plastic waste creates a potential fire hazard. Fires at plastic sorting and recycling operations are a regular occurrence with potentially toxic impacts to neighbors. … PureCycle’s original plan to include washing and flaking of plastic waste could inflict additional harm on the local, regional and state environment. Washing operations require a significant amount of freshwater, which is in limited supply the world over.”

Co-signers of the letter also have expressed environmental justice concerns about PureCycle’s Winter Garden facility. The letter continues to state that the area surrounding PureCycle’s facility is “historically black” and “does not deserve further exploitation.”

“PureCycle must reconsider the location of the facility if PureCycle is truly committed to social and environmental responsibility,” the letter concludes.

A PureCycle spokesperson tells Recycling Today that it has been working closely with government officials in Winter Garden and Orange County, Florida, to address questions and concerns.

“Until very recently, officials seemed supportive of the facility being located at the present site, which sits just outside of Winter Garden’s city limits,” a PureCycle spokesperson tells Recycling Today. “This central Florida site is the ideal setting to bring 21st century tech jobs to the area. We expect to create 30 to 40 well-paid, skilled jobs and hire East Winter Garden residents to fill them. We hoped local officials would want to bring jobs back to the city and provide opportunities to a neighborhood that has long been underserved.”

The spokesperson adds that the facility is located in “an industrial zoned area and will exclusively serve as a sorting facility for plastics. It is not a material recovery facility. As such, it will not serve as a drop-off area for curbside waste.” PureCycle says it plans to prep material at the central Florida facility to later be processed and purified at one of its locations in Ohio or Georgia.

The company says it plans to continue to invest in the local community and work closely with city and county officials in the coming months.

The Finland company says Global Physical Asset Management’s inspection technology will complement Metso Outotec’s grinding products.

Metso Outotec, Helsinki, Finland, has completed the acquisition of Global Physical Asset Management, a technology provider based in Three Lakes, Wisconsin.

The value of the acquisition has not been disclosed. It will have no material impact on Metso Outotec’s financials, says the company.

Global Physical Asset Management’s innovative technologies and digital inspection method are patented and complementary to Metso Outotec’s service offering for grinding. This acquisition will bring more value to customers and support them in achieving reliable plant performance. The acquired technology enables 60 percent faster gear inspections with greater accuracy when compared to the use of conventional methods.

“I am very pleased about this important step toward our strategic target to become the preferred services provider in our industry,” Metso Outotec Services President Sami Takaluoma says. “The unique technology and digital inspection method fit excellently with our services strategy and grinding offering and will also bring potential to further develop our inspection capabilities for our crushing solutions. I warmly welcome our new colleagues to the Metso Outotec team.”

Metso Outotec has experience from designing, manufacturing and supplying over 8,000 grinding mills globally, including the manufacturing and supply for some of the largest semi-autogenous and autogenous mills in the world. With the acquisition of Global Physical Asset Management, Metso Outotec can leverage the strength of its extensive installed base and field service network and increase its capabilities to serve the third-party installed base.

“We are excited that we are now a part of a truly international company,” Global Physical Asset Management co-founders Tom and Jason Shumka say. “As Global Physical Asset Management joins Metso Outotec, its solutions will become available for customers globally.”

The value of the acquisition is not disclosed. It will have no material impact on Metso Outotec’s financials.

Related articles: Metso Outotec acquires Tesab Engineering | Metso Outotec invests in India

Plastic recycling facility equipped to handle city’s PET and HDPE bottles.

A plastic sorting, recycling and reprocessing facility that was several years in the making has now opened in Hong Kong.

Equipped for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic bottles discarded in Hong Kong, New Life Plastics Ltd. (NLP) is a joint venture formed by: the ALBA Group Asia Ltd. subsidiary of Berlin-based ALBA; Hong Kong-based Baguio Waste Management & Recycling Ltd.; and Hong Kong-based Swire Coca-Cola Ltd.

The 6,500-square-meter (70,000-square-feet) facility is capable of handling up to 900 metric tons of PET and HDPE bottles monthly in its initial configuration. The facility has been operating since the first quarter of this year, NLP says.

“The goal of New Life Plastics is to become a sustainable player between the consumers, the producers, and the Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] government by closing the loop at the end consumption, and recycling plastic bottles to produce food-grade ready rPET flakes and high-quality rHDPE flakes for a broad range of applications,” says Frank Schepers, general manager of NLP.

He continues, “According to the Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong (Waste Statistics for 2020) issued by the Environmental Protection Department, the overall plastic recyclables’ recovery rate has climbed from 8 percent in 2019 to 11 percent in 2020. Used plastic bottles are valuable resources with high recyclability. Thanks to the continuous initiatives and efforts made by the government, nongovernmental organizations, collectors, consumers and domestic helpers, the local community has made a great leap on their recycling awareness and habit in recent years when it comes to clean plastic bottle recycling.

"We understand the community might have concerns over the breadth and depth of local recycling for the postconsumer plastic bottles put in the collection bins. At NLP, we assure the Hong Kong community that all PET and HDPE plastic bottles arriving at our doorstep will be treated professionally with the state-of-art technology, and we are honored to play a part in the sustainable solution of plastic bottle recycling in Hong Kong.”

NLP says its role begins with the arrival of postconsumer PET and HDPE bottles packed in bales. That material will go through five “carefully designed advanced processing pillars in the facility, namely preparation, separation, sorting, processing and quality control,” the company says.

Initially, a bale breaker opens the bales, allowing the bottles to be separated from each other before going under an over-belt magnet, through a trommel screen and then a label scraper for the removal of metal impurities, size screening and label detachment, respectively.

Bottle sorting according to their resin (PET or HDPE) and color (transparent or other color) will then be undertaken by five optical sorters. After that, clear PET and HDPE bottles will be sent to different silos for cutting, grinding, washing and drying procedures.

Clear PET flakes will additionally go through a dual hot washing stage and a final quality check via another optical sorter. Those steps, says NLP, are important to comply with a food-grade ready standard.

Yields including rPET flakes, rHDPE flakes, label flakes, cap and ring flakes will be separately collected and sent through different silos for bagging over the course of the production process. The facility also features an in-house quality control laboratory to monitor yields, “thereby ensuring the highest possible standards are met before dispatching,” NLP says.

The introduction of what NLP calls first-of-its-kind food-grade ready plastic recycling processing in Hong Kong “is pivotal to the local plastic bottle recycling industry, as it is a closed-loop recycling solution, meaning that the valuable material is recycled back to a quality close to the original material; hence, creating more economic and environmental value,” NLP says.

“This is the so-called ‘bottle-to-bottle’ approach,” Schepers says. “The rPET plastic boom is attracting wider attention and I am glad to see NLP taking the lead in the domestic market for food-grade ready rPET recycling processing. I am sure our role will add value to the conventional plastic bottle recycling industry by providing a sustainable solution to Hong Kong’s plastic bottle usage through the creation of a circular economy for both PET and HDPE plastic bottles.”

Reusable and recyclable bottle will be displayed at the K Fair in Germany in October.

Borealis, an Austria-based global packaging firm, says it has worked with United States-based Trexel, a developer of foaming injection and blow molding processes, to create a new polypropylene (PP) bottle based on a grade from the Bornewables portfolio of polyolefins made using renewable feedstocks “derived 100 percent from [scrap] and residue streams.”

The bottle will be on display at the Borealis stand at the K 2022 (K Fair) on Oct. 19-26 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Borealis calls the bottle reusable and fully recyclable and says it “boasts a significantly lower overall CO2 footprint because it is composed of renewably-sourced feedstock and produced in a foaming process.”

Borealis says its Bornewables portfolio of circular polyolefins offers material performance equal to virgin polymers, also allowing for “design freedom and color flexibility” to “retain a premium look and feel.”

The new reusable new bottle retains its value over many life cycles because of the use of Trexel’s molding technology, while the use of a Bornewables grade means the new bottle minimizes its use of virgin materials. “Moreover, converters consume less energy in the production process when using the [Trexel] MuCell technology,” Borealis says.

“Reuse and recycling are core components of the integrated circular cascade model aligned with our EverMinds platform, which unites committed players across the entire value chain in accelerating the move to plastics circularity,” says Peter Voortmans, Borealis global commercial director of consumer products.

Voortmans adds, “This project is an excellent example of how we are working with industry partners to solve the problem of plastic waste while delivering real value to our customers. Combining our polymers and recycling expertise with Trexel’s material processing know-how enables us to reinvent essentials for sustainable living.”

“Having anticipated market demand for more sustainable plastic packaging, we have focused our development resources over the last several years on the circular sphere,” says David Bernstein, Trexel board chair and interim CEO. “Our foaming solutions for blow molding and thin-wall packaging enable brand owners and molders to realize improved sustainability and enhanced product performance while delivering cost savings.”

Germany-based Ineos Styrolution now offers two mechanically recycled-content ABS grades.

Ineos Styrolution, a Germany-based global provider of styrene plastics, has introduced two recycled-content resins as part of its specialty acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) product group. The company says its Novodur and Novodur High Heat resins can be used in applications in the automotive, electronics and household products sectors.

Ineos says, “The individual grades come with a significant product carbon footprint saving of up to 71 percent as compared to respective non-ECO product references.”

The company describes the mechanically recycled Novodur ECO MR resin as a general purpose ABS grade providing “high flowability, good stiffness and high gloss.” The material is available with a 30 percent, 50 percent or 70 percent postconsumer mechanically recycled content (PCR), according to the firm.

The Novodur ECO MR product comes in several colors and in black and offers a carbon footprint saving of up to 57 percent, Ineos says. The resin group “is currently under evaluation by various customers to become a material of choice for various household appliances,” the company adds.

The Ineos Novodur ECO High Heat MR family of products, available in black, includes “all ABS products modified to allow thermally stressed components to meet stringent stability requirements,” Ineos says. Three different high heat grades offer carbon footprint savings of up to 28 percent while the recycled content can be 30 percent or 40 percent, depending on the grade.  

“This announcement [will] not be the last such announcement,” says Dr. Eike Jahnke, vice president at Ineos Styrolution. “We will continue on our journey to deliver sustainable options for all our product groups.”