PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2015

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 20 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 06/15 www.petpla.net Bottler, recycler or organic producer? It’s not just PET bottles that make their way to the plant. Aluminium cans, plas- tic packaging and other impurities are separated out by Blue Mountain Plastics Ice River Springs Water Company Inc. of Feversham, Ontario, is a bottler of water – as the name implies. The company gets its supplies from springs on the lands owned by the Gott family and it is the leading private-label bottler in Canada. It holds a large share of the Canadian bottled water market and enjoys a growing presence in the USA. Sustainable operations rank high in the company’s priori- ties; this focus helps to explain why it can recycle up to 85% of all consumer PET plastics generated in the Province of Ontario into new bottles for their own needs, thus minimis- ing the use of new material. Ice River Springs, together with its subsidiary, Blue Mountain Plas- tics, Shelburne, is one of the larg- est PET processors in Canada. The plant, which is situated to the north of Toronto, ON, has a capacity of over 22,600 metric tons of pressed PET bales a year. One of its challenges is the fact that the bales it receives are not as well differentiated as is the case in other parts of the world. They are only 65% PET, with the balance made up of closures, labels, alumin- ium cans and other plastic packaging. To cope with this, Blue Mountain Plastics, together with Amut SpA, has built up a complex sorting operation. Every portion of a bale is sorted and recycled with only a small percentage of the bale residual materials ending up in landfill. Individual types of con- tainers and colours are separated out in the conditioning plant, which helps it to achieve a very high degree of purity. In this system, the bottle under- goes total shredding only at the end of the process. Sorting of the various elements begins with the baling wire that keeps the bales together. This is chipped and sold to metal recyclers. Aluminium cans exit via a metal separator, where they subsequently undergo post-sort- ing and baling. The pure aluminium cans themselves will attract higher prices than the per kg price of the original bale. Next, the used labels are collected and the PET bottles split up into clear and blue and green streams. At the end of the process the flakes go through a colour separator again, thus delivering a very high level of purity. Ice River Springs has recently expanded its use of the other recov- ered mixed plastics with the acquisi- tion of a share of CR Plastics — a company that manufactures outdoor furniture from 100% recycled HDPE and PP. As a result of this partnership the company has found a valuable use for the post-consumer plastics bundled in with the PET bales; all the recovered HDPE and PP chips go to CR Plastics for its 100% recycled chairs. After this process, the washed PET flakes go down two different routes in-plant before they become reborn in bottles. Ice River operates both Starlinger and Krones bottle to bottle recycling systems and can process up to 3000kg/h. The purified PET materials comply with both CFIA and FDA requirements and can be used directly in beverage applications. Ice River processes these materials into preforms at injection moulding machines located in each of its plants. It is unique in Canada in being able to manufacture bottles with up to 100% rPET. In the traditional conditioning oper- ation, the PET needs to be heated 3 times (melt filtration, decontamination, and subsequently injection mould- ing) to make a preform. Ice River is working actively with both Starlinger and Krones to develop new process- ing methods to minimise these steps, which will lead to savings in both energy and processing costs. Premium Sponsor Sponsors Plastics furniture made from recovered HDPE and PP chips collected and washed at Blue Mountain plastics.