Sep 18, 2020

Partnership targets postindustrial mixed-material plastic scrap Berry Global and Azek to recycle more than 30 million pounds of plastic annually. Berry Global Group Inc., Evansville, Indiana, has announced it has signed a formalized working agreement with Chicago-based The Azek Co.’s Azek Building Products business unit to use Berry’s mixed-material, postindustrial scrap to make residential and commercial building materials, such as composite decking. The recycled plastic will come from Berry’s operations across multiple facilities and divisions in North America. “Sustainability is at the core of what we do, and we are incredibly fortunate to be able to expand our recycling program through this partnership with Berry Global, giving plastic a new life in our premium products,” says Jesse Singh, CEO of The Azek Co. “This agreement strengthens our position, expands our recycling initiatives and enables us to increase the overall sustainability of our manufacturing operations—so homeowners can feel good about building their outdoor spaces with our products.” “We are excited to collaborate with Azek as they bring outstanding products that perform better than alternatives and take advantage of plastic recyclability,” says Tom Salmon, chairman and CEO of Berry Global. “Through continued sustainable partnering up and down the plastics supply chain, we are further exhibiting the power of plastics to help move the world toward a circular economy.” Berry says its collaboration with Azek represents its focus on investments in mechanical and advanced recycling , the innovative use of recycled material in products and global commitments to address plastic waste in the environment. The company’s sustainability strategy is detailed in its "Impact 2025" goals, released last year. The company's 2019 sustainability achievements include setting a new record for annual use of postconsumer plastic of 70,000 metric tons (154 million pounds), much of which was driven by its acquisition of U.K.-based packaging company RPC Group Plc in 2019. Berry also says it realized a 13 percent reduction in its landfill waste intensity from 2018 to 2019, which exceeded its goal of a 5 percent year-over-year reduction. “2019 was a transformative year for Berry – from announcing our sustainability strategy, Impact 2025, to launching the Alliance to End  Plastic Waste  as a founding member to joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastics Economy working group as a Global Commitment signatory. I am proud of what we have been able to collectively achieve, and I am excited to share our progress with you,” Robert Flores , vice president of Sustainability for Berry, said when the company released its progress on its sustainability goals earlier this year. Azek operates manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Berry is a leading global supplier of a broad range of rigid, flexible and nonwoven products used within consumer and industrial end markets. The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, has submitted comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to be included in the annual report assessing China’s compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO). The association says it appreciates the USTR’s comprehensive overviews of the major trade barriers affecting the recycling industry in the annual report. However, the comments ISRI submitted this week express its concern that China has failed to notify the WTO of rounds of import bans, its “overly strict” product standards, challenging licensing requirements and “nontransparent” quota issuances. In its letter to the USTR, ISRI says, “China has been phasing in prohibitions and nontariff restrictions on imports of scrap materials since 2018 (which the Chinese government inexpertly lumps in with other nonvalue waste streams and ambiguously refers to all of it as “solid waste”). The first set of prohibitions implemented in early 2018 had been notified to the WTO, but subsequent rounds of import bans, overly strict product standards, challenging licensing requirements and nontransparent quota issuances were not notified. Furthermore, it is our general understanding that the Chinese Government intends to ban all ‘solid waste’ by 2021, but there has been no transparency on such a policy, leading to great uncertainty in the marketplace.” ISRI’s comments say that “there has been general talk in the marketplace” since 2017 that the Chinese government could implement “a blanket import ban on all ‘solid waste’ (including scrap commodities) by 2021.” ISRI adds, “However, no official law or regulation has been developed, discussed or implemented to fulfill this intention, and instead, we have seen nontariff barriers applied to imports of scrap commodities that have impacted trade in scrap commodities with China.” The association continues, “Recognizing that Chinese manufacturers are still in great need of these materials, the Chinese government announced in early 2020 the intent to implement a new set of standards on imports of aluminum, brass and copper ‘recycled raw materials.’ What makes these standards distinct from the overly strict standards on ‘solid waste’ and scrap that were implemented in 2018 is that material entering the Chinese market under the new ‘recycled raw materials’ standards would be in a form that is immediately ready for the smelter. This is the first major indication – after many years of advocacy by ISRI and our members – that the Chinese government understands that scrap is not waste but valuable raw material inputs for manufacturing.” ISRI indicates it supports “the use of the WTO Compliance report as an avenue to keep legislators and the public informed of the health of U.S. industries impacted by Chinese Government trade policy actions.” The full text of ISRI’s comments can be found here . Ineos Styrolution, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and Trinseo, global manufacturers of polystyrene (PS) and other styrenic materials based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, have advanced their plans to build a PS recycling plant based on depolymerization in Wingles, which is in northern France. According to a news release from Ineos Styrolution, the commercial-scale recycling facility will be able to process up to 50 tons per day of postconsumer PS feedstock and is expected to be fully operational by mid-2023. Ineos Styrolution reports that the plastics-to-plastics depolymerization technology converts PS food packaging scrap directly back into its original liquid monomer, which then can be repolymerized into recycled PS for the same high-quality end applications, including food-contact applications, much like virgin PS. Both Ineos Styrolution and Trinseo are considering two technology concepts from Agilyx and Recycling Technologies will be evaluated with regard to quality, efficiency and adaptation to different waste streams. “We are excited to move to the next phase of engineering of this plant, as we are well on track to deploy the game-changing depolymerization technology with the construction of this recycling plant in France,” says Nicolas Joly, vice president of Plastics & Feedstocks at Trinseo and president of Styrenics Circular Solutions. “This plant will be part of establishing a novel recycling infrastructure for styrenics in Europe together with key players from across the entire value chain, which will mark a step change in polystyrene recycling.” “Our collaboration between Trinseo and Ineos Styrolution is a significant commitment of capital and resources and a major milestone in truly closing the loop with food-grade recycled content,” says Sven Riechers, vice president of business management and standard products EMEA at Ineos Styrolution. “It forms part of Ineos Styrolution’s and Trinseo’s commitments to use, on average, 30 percent recycled content in products destined for polystyrene packaging in Europe by 2025.” MerQBiz, an analytics provider for recovered paper buyers and sellers based in El Segundo, California, has released BaleFacts, a report that details critical quality criteria about bale shipments and provides quality certification for transparent transactions. Similar to “car facts” reports used in the auto industry, BaleFacts quality certification provides detailed data about recovered paper (RCP) shipments based on a sample of inspected bales, MerQBiz says in a news release on the new report. BaleFacts documents the material inspection date, paper grade, shipment tonnage, bale identification numbers, content breakdown, a photo of each bale inspected and average content breakdown of the overall shipment. It provides mills with assurance in the quality of the material they are receiving and serves as a historical record of the transaction. The company adds that BaleFacts provides RCP buyers with a clear picture of the supplier performance through historical data. “We conduct BaleVision quality inspections where our technicians measure bale quality on-site at the seller’s location, or the seller can lease our inspection device to do their own quality checks,” says John Fox, MerQBiz president and CEO. “Our dedicated sales team can also connect sellers with buyers for their product in both domestic and international markets.” MerQBiz says multiple recyclers are also running trials of its “Confidence in Supply” (CIS) and “Confidence in Export” (CIE) solution as well. Chris Parsons, export director at MerQBiz, says the early trials of CIS and CIE have been “well received” so far. He says the CIE program ensures suppliers have objective quality data with a BaleFacts certification for each shipment. “The report is shared via the cloud with the company’s representatives in Asia who can walk into a mill and confirm buyer acceptance based on the quality before the shipment ever leaves the stateside port,” Parsons says. The CIS program is focused on helping domestic transactions, Parsons adds. The CIE and CIS programs are powered by MerQBiz’s BaleVision inspection and analytics platform as well as the BaleFacts reports. MerQBiz says the services are available globally for all buyers and sellers of RCP.