PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2019

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 04/19 www.petpla.net 37 the recycling rates, for instance, pro- viding assistance for recycling carts in a community. “There is also a dia- logue about EPR (extended produc- ers responsibility) in the US, whether it will happen I’m not sure, but some things have to done differently in order for the supply to grow.” Challenges in local recycling The radius where Phoenix Tech- nologies gets most material from is 500 miles: Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois in the Mid-West. “Our customer base is also in a 500 mile radius. We think about collect and convert locally. 8 hours may not seem local, but for the US it is fairly local. It makes no sense to ship mate- rial from California here, the footprint is too big. Because bale quality is such that you might only recognise 65% good feedstock, it is not sensi- ble to pay to ship that 35% that does not have much value. We really look where we source from and we keep a very close eye on the whole footprint. During the process we produce little that goes to landfill. Today, it is so hard to make all the pieces usable, we can find a home for everything, but it takes time to find such homes.” “We do not change our suppliers a lot because we spend so much time building up good relationships, trying all the time to make improvements. They want to send as much PET as possible, they know they cannot do 100% but they measure too, so our feedback is verification for their meas- urement system. We use our flakes to make resin and we know what we need to make our resin, so we can run different specifications of flakes. We also have green bales which are used primarily for strapping. For flakes, we can sack it up for shipping or put it in a silo and from there it is taken to our resin plant a kilometre away.” Recycling colours in the US In the US recycling of colour is clear, green and blue and amber; amber, for beer bottles. In total the market has many different colours outside of the green, blue, and amber. So what to do with these bottles? We have investigated Chemical Recy- cling: “Today (as of this interview) there is no independent commercial facility to my knowledge, they are in YOUR PARTNER IN RECYCL ING SYSTEMS WWW.SOREMA.IT FROM SINGLE MODULES TO TURNKEY PROJECTS startup, but as yet there is no com- mercial facility,” says Lori. In the end there is a lot of hope: “We hope to grow, hope to be more efficient, hope for development on the machinery because every human hand is hard to find. And there is work that should have not be done by humans, instead placing them where they can add more value. The city also hopes that we will grow.” Expansion plans: “Another plant is not out of the question but we like to see how stable the market turns out to be before we make any decision,” Lori said in conclusion. www.phoenixtechnologies.net The S+S Color Separator at the plant in Bowling Green, Ohio.