Thermoformer Chases “chasing Arrows” Recycling Symbol No Longer

Dordan Manufacturing’s Sustainability Coordinator Chandler Slavin sought to see her family business’s products—PET thermoformed packaging—be designated as recyclable. Five years later, it is both recyclable and recycled and bears the recycling symbol.

Editor’s Note: In the 2011 article, “Thermoformer chases chasing arrows for clamshell packaging,” I chronicled the efforts of a daring young woman, Chandler Slavin, to rectify what she perceived as a wrong. Slavin dared to ask the question that unfurled her long day’s journey into night: “Why isn’t thermoformed packaging recycled?” Her family business, Dordan Manufacturing, makes thermoformed polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging (see Figure 1). Slavin began climbing a hill that became a mountain. She has worked tirelessly to try to convert the status of thermoformed packaging at its end of life from landfill waste into a recyclable.

Spoiler alert. Today, thermoformed packaging dons the recyclable stamp (see Figure 2). Thermoformed packaging is not only recyclable, it is recycled, and Slavin is chasing “chasing arrows” no more. Her account below provides the happy conclusion to the story.

Figure 1:
Dordan Manufacturing makes PET thermoformed plastic packaging.

Five years ago I was working at my family manufacturing company’s booth at the Walmart Sustainable Packaging Expo in Bentonville, Ark., when a packaging engineer from Burt’s Bees walked by. “Thermoformed packaging?” I asked enthusiastically, only to be met with an ambivalent expression and the following remark: “We are getting out of thermoformed trays because thermoformed packaging isn’t recyclable.” Crickets.

The plastics and packaging industry since has collaborated to add PET thermoformed containers to the country’s collection for recycling programs. Society of Plastics Industry (SPI) and the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) sought submissions from recycling program operators interested in establishing a model program for collection and intermediate processing of recycled PET (rPET) thermoformed flake. SPI and NAPCOR required grant recipients to address all necessary areas to implement a comprehensive and efficient program to recycle PET thermoforms to win the grant. Those areas included consumer education, outreach to nonresidential sources of thermoforms, collection, intermediate processing, segregation and bailing, and marketing of material.

The grant was available to any recycling program operators that could implement a program for private, county, municipal, or joint-venture facilities; regional cooperative programs, and state-managed or -directed programs.

The primary grant in the amount of $63,000 was awarded to Montgomery County, Md., Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Solid Waste Services. Secondary grants were awarded to the Pennsylvania Recycling Markets Center, Middletown, Pa. ($25,000), and the Firstar Fiber Inc., Omaha, Neb. ($10,000). Each recipient was selected for its unique demographics and market realities.

Montgomery County’s Division of Solid Waste Services provides waste management facilities, programs, and services to a diverse customer base of 1.5 million people living and working in the county, including single-family homes and multifamily apartments, condominiums, commercial businesses and organizations, and governmental facilities. The county also facilitates away-from-home recycling opportunities such as at local/regional events and festivals.

Montgomery County’s goal for the grant was to develop an efficient urban/suburban model for PET thermoform recycling.

The Pennsylvania Recycling Markets Center is a nonprofit corporation providing waste management services for 165,000 residents of Elk and Lebanon Counties. Elk County has a population of 31,946 and offers public, private, and nonprofit recycling collection operations, including two curbside and six drop-off programs sponsored by local government. The Lebanon County Recycling Program serves a population of 133,568 and, like Elk County, offers public, private, and nonprofit recycling programs, including 17 curbside collection programs and eight drop-off programs, all sponsored by local government.

The Recycling Markets Center’s goal for the grant was to develop a successful rural collection model for PET thermoform recycling.

Firstar Fiber Inc., is a privately owned recycler providing waste management services to Omaha and Lincoln metropolitan regions; central and northeastern communities of Nebraska; and the Sioux City, Woodbury County, and western regions of Iowa. With its diverse customer base and collection methods, Firstar built a strong, collaborative PET thermoform recycling program team that includes Omaha’s recycling office, local college sport venues, and regional grocery representatives.

Firstar’s goal for the grant was to implement a sustainable residential and away-from-home PET thermoform recycling model.

Education and Consumer Outreach

Because of the different demographics among the grant recipients, different education and consumer outreach programs were initiated: Montgomery Country employed the most extensive forms of education, investing in everything from advertisements in cable television, radio, movie theater previews, print publications, residential mailers, and transit advertising.

Recycling Markets Center invested in more moderate educational messaging, including residential mailers and radio advertisements.

Firstar focused on targeted messaging, like video advertisements at sporting events to facilitate away from home recycling, and “I’m Recyclable” stickers on grocery products.

Intermediate Processing

Look-a-like contamination–that is, rigid plastic materials such as PVC clamshells destined for landfill that must be separated from PET thermoformed containers–is one of the largest technical hurdles to including PET thermoformed containers in the PET bottle recycling stream. PET thermoforms in PET bottle bales merit high postconsumer value for recyclers, and there is high domestic and international demand for quality rPET.

To address this challenge, each grant recipient had to develop a method for sorting PET thermoforms from its nonrecyclable look-a-likes so as not to compromise the value of the PET bottle bales. While current market preferences indicate that the best way to sort PET thermoforms from other contaminating thermoforms is via automated sorting systems (use of infrared technologies), each recipient developed the best process for sortation considering access to capital and existing sortation methods.

Montgomery County proved to be extremely effective at manual sort: It processed clear PET thermoforms in secondary sort, once all the fiber, metal, PET bottles, and HDPE containers had been removed. The county trained sorters to visually identify PET thermoform packaging from other look-a-likes, relying on NAPCOR’s technical training and a video it developed internally for training. Grant funding was used to purchase two hoppers and hire two individuals devoted to sorting PET thermoforms.

The Recycling Markets Center, with its focus on rural recycling programs, relied on source separation at drop-off locations as the primary processing method for PET thermoform recycling. Those thermoforms not readily distinguishable as PET were put aside for further analysis via portable plastic resin-analyzing equipment procured by Recycling Markets Center through grant funding. Also acquired with grant funding were durable storage containers that could be broken down easily when not used, bulk mailing of education material, and radio advertisements.

Firstar processed curbside-collected thermoforms via manual sortation into mixed-plastic loads. The process to recover PET bottles and thermoforms was neither manual nor strictly mechanical insofar as requiring optical sorters; rather, both were left on a conveyor feeding the container sort line so as to fall off the end along with aluminum cans, which were removed with eddy current. Firstar sorters removed only plastics No. 2 to No.7, letting PET stay on the line. Sorters then visually identified PET thermoforms on the line via NAPCOR technical training.

Grant funding was used to situate participating colleges with recycling containers and the aforementioned targeted educational media.

The Results

In Montgomery County, the total PET thermoforms shipped during the grant period was 258.67 tons compared to the 40.14 tons that were shipped six months before the grant.

For the Recycling Markets Center, the PET thermoforms collected were mixed with bottles. Mixed PET bottle/thermoform bales totaled 27.4 tons, with 10 percent of each bale by weight estimated to be PET thermoforms.

And at Firstar, a study identified that PET thermoforms represented 9 percent of the total PET processed. No definitive figures exist for total PET bottle and thermoform tons shipped and sold. Firstar suggested that allowable levels of thermoforms may be 5 to 10 percent by weight of PET bottle/thermoform bales; that only a manual sort could maintain low capital costs; and that relying on sort crews provides further responsiveness to match the developing supply chain (i.e., scale up or down thermoforms collected to match intermediate PET processors’ tolerances). The company determined that end-market value related to combining thermoforms with bottles would inform material handling procedures at the municipal recycling facility level; similarly, the market would determine tolerance levels.

From Recyclable to Recycled

Figure 2:
PET thermoformed packaging can now don the rPET “1” symbol. These symbols were created by plastic manufacturers to help people identify the kind of plastic resin used to make the container, intended to help consumers determine if the container can be accepted by their local recycling program, according to the U.S. EPA. The resin number is contained in a “chasing arrows” triangle, which looks very similar to the recycling symbol, but this does not necessarily mean it can be collected for recycling in all communities—but it is a start.

With the majority of American communities now accepting all non-bottle rigid containers for recycling and the technical barriers to PC PET thermoform recycling being resolved, the floodgates to PET thermoform are ready to be opened.

So, have the floodgates opened? Are communities finding a market for post-consumer PET thermoformed packaging? It is one thing to accept material for recycling; it is quite another, however, to actually recycle it.

The three different communities actually recycled post-consumer PET thermoform packaging into second-generation products and packaging. Through a discussion of the different education, collection, sortation, and reprocessing methods used, insight will be provided into which model proves best-in-class, allowing other communities to follow suit.

There is no one-size-fits all when it comes to recycling post-consumer PET thermoforms. These model programs demonstrate the unique character of each community’s waste management systems and how this variability informs the type of sortation methods required to find a home for post-consumer PET thermoform containers.

NAPCOR urges recyclers looking to collect PET thermoforms to talk to their buyers about the available markets, because each has its own specifications for procurement. Several PET reclaimers in the U.S. and Canada now include specified percentages of PET thermoforms allowable in their PET bottle bales as part of their PET bale specifications, demonstrating the continuing development of this new market.

NAPCOR reports that in 2013, PET thermoforms collected for recycling in the U.S. and Canada increased 25 percent over 2012, from 47.8 million pounds to 60 million. In five years, PET thermoformed containers went from being largely landfilled to being collected for recycling in the majority of American communities.

PET thermoforms have come a long way the last five years, from being landfilled PET to being collected for recycling to actually being recycled. Post-consumer PET thermoforms now are a sustainable medium for containers and are being sold by retailers. Thanks to the efforts of PET and recycling stakeholders up and down the supply chain, I can now exclaim with pride, “recyclable and recycled thermoformed packaging!”

Special thanks to Eileen Kao, Chief, Waste Reduction and Recycling Section of the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection and Kate Eagles, Program Director at NAPCOR.

Notes:

SPI & NAPCOR, “SPI and NAPCOR Study on Increasing PET Thermoform Recycling through Education, Access and Collection Programs,” October 30, 2014, www.plasticsindustry.org, p. 2.

Moore Recycling Associates Inc., “Plastic Recycling Collection National Reach Study: 2012 Update,” February 2013, p. 5, http://www.moorerecycling.com/m_02_00.html.

NAPCOR & The Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, “Report on Postconsumer PET Container Activity in 2013,” October 8, 2014, http://www.napcor.com/pdf/NAPCOR_2013RateReport-FINAL.pdf.

Chandler Slavin is a member of the Sustainable Manufacturer Network advisory board.