Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Your Plastic Waste is Valuable

I've been saying for nearly two years now that 'your plastic waste is valuable and the plastics industry wants it'. The local newspaper supports this idea in an article published yesterday showing that the state of Minnesota alone (with just just 1.7 of the US's population) tossed more than $217 million dollars worth of recyclable materials away as trash. And 42% of that value - $93 million - is attributable to plastics:
"...at $500 per ton, what now goes into trash cans would be worth $93 million to manufacturers."
If Minnesota is representative of the whole US, then nationwide there is more than $5.4 billion dollars of recyclable plastic that is waste. Minnesota is actually a bad example of the potential, since across the state, recycling rates are already high:
"Minnesota’s average recycling rate is higher than that of most states — and it has stayed high, just under 50 percent of what gets thrown away..."
which means that nationwide figure would be even higher. Any company spending $5+ billion on raw materials is pretty good sized, so you can see the potential.

Repeat after me: Your plastic waste is valuable and the plastics industry wants it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

By the recycling process plastic can be reusable. So don’t waste the plastic product and please don’t throw it here and there. Try to use as possible as and give it to the recycler for to make other things which are again usable. And keep save the environment. Thanks for your information.
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