Residents can soon recycle flexible plastic
Items such as bags, wrappers could become pipes, playground equipment, building materials
Palmer Township residents will soon be able to add a major category to their list of recyclable materials: “flexible plastic,” which includes grocery bags, pouches, wraps and packaging.
The service begins May 1, when the township’s contract with J.P. Mascaro & Sons’ Total Recycle Inc. goes into effect. Total Recycle Inc. has one of few sorting facilities in the country with the technology to sort flexible plastics.
“These were some of the things that were contaminating our recycling,” said Cindy Oatis, the township’s recycling and solid waste coordinator.
“There’s a lot of ‘wish-recycling’ going on out there,” she said, referring to well-intentioned consumers who try to recycle items that aren’t accepted. “This is a whole new category.”
About 12 billion pounds of plastics in this category are consumed each year in the U.S., according to Materials Recovery for the Future, a nonprofit that sponsored a pilot program installing sorting equipment at Total Recycle in Exeter Township, Berks County. But many of these items, especially small, single-use plastics, are difficult to recycle because they fall into the crevices of recycling machinery, or aren’t accepted by recycling centers at all.
As a result, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 91% of all plastic simply isn’t recycled, and ends up in landfills or the environment.
The township previously contracted with Greenstar in Pen Argyl, but as it sought new bids when that contract was ending, J.P. Mascaro came in lowest. Oatis got the unanimous go-ahead from supervisors Monday night to add the flexible-plastic sorting to the township’s single-stream recycling program, at no cost.
When processed, the plastic will be turned into corrugated materials like pipes, playground equipment and building materials.
“It’s very new technology,” Oatis said. “Very exciting.”
Materials Recovery for the Future — whose members include Amcor, The Dow Chemical Co., LyondellBasell, Nestle Purina PetCare and Nestle USA, PepsiCo, Plum Organics, The Procter & Gamble Co., SC Johnson, Sealed Air and Target — launched the nation’s first such pilot program at Total Recycle in 2019.
A year later, MRFF reported that its technology was able to capture 74% of the flexible plastic packaging in the recycling volume it handled at Total Recycle.
Oatis hopes this program will encourage residents to recycle, after recent trade wars with China and the advent of singlestream left some feeling weary or skeptical of recycling.
“Recycling’s not dead; It just hit a bump in the road for a while,” she said. “It’s coming back.”