Great Lakes Circular Materials Roundtable: Film Plastics - June 23, 2020
Overview
Our second Great Lakes Circular Materials Roundtable was hosted in late June 2020 and focused on film plastics. Here's a quick recap, and some key takeaways and observations from our team:
Presentations were provided by these speakers:
Katie Fournier, Project Coordinator at Michigan Recycling Coalition
Lindsey Walker, Commercial Recycling Market Development at Emmet County
Matt Keiswetter, Packaging Division Manager at Petoskey Plastics
Arjun Krishnan, Recyclable Materials and Supply Manager at EFS Plastics
Price Murphy, Director of Operations at Revolution Plastics
Key Takeaways
Partnerships between MRFs like Emmet County Recycling and manufacturers like Trex have enabled reprocessing of film plastics into new products. Emmet County is a great example to follow for municipalities interested in accepting film plastics.
Petoskey Plastics - a Michigan-based manufacturer - has a closed-loop process for stretch film/pallet wrap, clear bags & packaging (LLDPE & LDPE), and color bags and packaging (soft metal & PET contaminated).
EFS Plastics specialized in post-consumer plastic film recycling, and can process a variety of #2 and #4 plastic films.
Revolution Plastics also has a closed-loop manufacturing process, producing up to 97% post-consumer resin, and offers some very unique solutions for ag plastics.
Aggregation of small volume supplies will be key to unlocking additional market supply - the Materials Marketplace can play a data gathering role that may unlock some new creative solutions.
Action Items
Solutions proposed during breakout sessions included ways the Materials Marketplace can help businesses and organizations:
Help our team better understand the market by creating listings for film plastics as an available material.
For companies that can process film plastics, create wanted listings with your detailed spec requirements.
Start conversations with organizations that have plastic films as available material and/or those that can process them as wanted materials.
