recycling : Million-dollar-grants will go to two California reclaimers processing post-consumer thermoforms
The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) approved a three million dollar grant to Green Impact Manufacturing and a 1.6 million dollar grant to Global Plastics Recycling. CalRecycle also approved 863,000 dollar to Innovive, partially funding the company’s application for money to recycle single-use PET cages holding laboratory animals.
Green Impact Plastics is opening a PET thermoform recycling facility in the Los Angeles area. Using advanced sorting and processing technologies, the 7 million dollar facility takes in bales of post-consumer thermoforms and produces RPET for food-contact applications.
According to CalRecycle, the 3 million dollar grant will help Green Impact develop the facility, which will recycle over 30 million pounds of PET per year.
This isn’t the first time Global Plastics has received financial assistance from the state of California. Last year, CalRecycle awarded the business a 2 million dollar low-interest loan to buy sheet extrusion line equipment and refinance its debt. The company takes in post-consumer PET bales and produces RPET flakes, pellets, sheets and thermoforms.
Not the grant will help boost optical sorting capabilities and upgrade grinding and washing lines so Global Plastics Recycling can better handle thermoforms. The end product will be a mix of thermoform-bottle flakes, which will be shipped to packaging manufacturer Sonoco. CalRecycle documents indicate the project will divert about 2.6 million pounds of PET from landfills each year.
The last plastics-related project to receive a grant from CalRecycle was by Innovive. The company requested grant funds to expand its capacity to recycle PET single-use lab animal cages. The installation of separating, cleaning, grinding and sorting equipment and hiring of four people would give Innovive the ability to recycle 75% of the cages sold in California each year.
CalRecycle only had enough money available to partially fund Innovive’s grant request. The state will provide $860,000, but department staff have been authorized to provide another $330,000 to fully fund the application if money becomes available.