Local waste company J. P. Mascaro
& Sons announced that as part of its contract for the curbside collection
of recyclables, South Heidelberg Township residents, in connection with an
industry-sponsored recycling “Pilot Program”, will now be including flexible
plastic packaging (“FPP”) as a recyclable, instead of landfilling that material.
J.
P. Mascaro & Sons and its TotalRecycle fully-automated single stream
recycling facility in Exeter Township, Berks County, are leading an industry
innovative “Pilot Program” to demonstrate the viability of processing FPP at
automated material recovery facilities and marketing the recycled product,
known as r-Flex, to end users.
Historically,
FPP (i.e., plastic bags, wraps, pouches, product packaging, etc.), which
represents a growing portion of the residential household waste stream, has not
been successfully recycled and had to be landfilled.
Seeking
to process and market FPP as a "recyclable" for the first time, the
Materials Recovery for the Future ("MRFF") industry and association
members, including companies such as Dow Chemical, Nestlé Purina, Pepsico,
Procter & Gamble, Target, the Association of Plastic Recyclables, the
Flexible Packaging Association, the Plastics Industry Association, and the
American Chemistry Council, awarded a $2.6 million grant to Mascaro to install
sophisticated optical sorting equipment at its TotalRecycle facility to make
the recycling of FPP possible.
Collection
of FPP as a recyclable will begin in South Heidelberg Township at the end of
December, after Mascaro notifies all Township households of the types of FPP
that will now be collected as recyclables.
It is expected that the FPP Pilot Program will generate important data
to show interested municipalities that FPP recycling is possible and
economical, and that there is a market for the rFlex end product.