To protect the environment and provide a top-notch product at the same time, Plasticycle Technologies LLC developed a new way to recycle beverage bottles, grinding them down into granulated flakes that compete with virgin plastic resins on the worldwide market.
“The company’s mission is driven by the fact that our population generates over 56 billion water and beverage bottles every year and 50 billion wind up in sanitary landfills across the United States,” the principals said in their Innovation Awards 2009 application.
Principals of the company are: Howard Schachter, president; Manuel Sherman, vice president; and Samuel Simon, secretary/treasurer. The three have a combined total of 125 years of business experience.
Located in a 25,000-square-foot building at 60 Industrial Circle, in Pawtucket, Plasticycle Technologies employs 16 people over an 80-hour workweek and is “growing toward the processing of 50 million bottles per year,” the principals said. When automated upgrades are installed, the company intends to raise its production level to more than 80 million bottles annually.
Starting in the summer of 2008, the three principals began working on a new way to recycle PET (polyethylene terathalin) beverage bottles and generate a finished product for consumer markets. “Rising fuel and energy costs are forcing all producers and consumers to overcome and find creative means of reducing the cost of plastics in both the raw materials as well as the finished product areas,” the application states.
The innovative product is a “granulated flake” that is the result of “taking the waste PET beverage bottles and grinding these down below half-inch sizes,” the principals said, for sale to the textile and product packaging industries.
Schachter, a mining and metallurgical engineer, refined the process by creating a room temperature wash system using a proprietary compound and an ozone injection method to replace the usual boiling-water wash cycle.
After studying the worldwide resin market for 2001 to 2008, the principals concluded that “the energy crunch had overtaken the virgin plastic resin market and the window of opportunity was open for a recycle product to enter the arena,” they said.
After opening its first plant in October 2008, Plasticycle Technologies “reached a production level that dictated the need for more space and a costly move to a new location took place in April of 2009,” the principals said. The relocation and the cost of expanding and upgrading the production process caused delays, but “we are finally at a point where profit is being realized,” they said. •
