PLASTICS Honors Sustainability Champions at NPE

Design: Eastman, for its new molecular recycling facility in Tennessee. This material-to-material facility can process 110,000 metric tons of polyester waste destined for landfills or incineration. Eastman’s process reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% to 50% compared with traditional processes.

Materials: Bantam Materials UK, for its Prevented Ocean Plastic Initiative. The company creates a market for post-use PET in countries without robust recycling systems. The project has created 13 collection centers and prevented more than two billion bottles from ending up in the ocean. More than 2,000 jobs have been created, as have over 500,000 workdays for bottle collectors.

End-of-Life: Ultra-Poly Corp., for its ELV Bumper Recycling Program. The program turns about 1.2 million pounds a year of bumper covers collected from autobody shops into pellets for a wheel outer liner for GM heavy-duty pickup trucks.

Leadership: Earning the best score across all three categories was Polycarbin for its Circular Economy for Laboratory Plastics and Carbin Counter Platform. Polycarbin’s complete closed-loop system collects, recycles, and re-manufactures plastic lab products including pipette tips, tubes, tube racks, and more. The Carbin Counter tracking software gives users metrics like Scope 3 emission reductions, water conservation, landfill diversion, and other key environmental indicators. 

Amcor Rigid Packaging for its 100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) bottle for Blue Bin wine.

Avient for its Versaflex HC BIO BT218 plant-based material for single-use applications with a 25% smaller carbon footprint than petroleum-based elastomers.

Coperion for its ZSK FilCo filtration compounder, designed for recycling PCR or any highly contaminated polymer by allowing filtration and compounding in a single production step — reducing energy consumption and emissions by more than 50%.

Hoola One Technologies for its HO Wrack, a portable and mobile treatment plant for removing plastic pellet spills from unpaved areas. The HO Wrack separates plastic from rocks, dirt, and other materials.

PureCycle Technologies for its PureFive Ultra-Pure Recycling Process, a seven-stage purification process that extracts and filters color, odor, and other impurities out of polypropylene waste. The resulting Ultra-Pure recycled resin can be reused multiple times.