Austin Company Busy With Recycling Plastics

AUSTIN (AP) – A hundred years ago, a resourceful man like Mike Largent might have found himself in the scrap metal business, or, perhaps, as a peddler of rags.

Instead, he is engaged in a 21st-century version of recycling: He pelletizes plastic and Styrofoam.

In a North Austin warehouse recently expanded to handle more business, Largent oversees the operations and is a co-owner of Cycled Plastics, a 6-year-old company that pulls together detergent bottles, plastic flowerpots, milk crates, pallets, and the sort of foam that is used to pack computers.

The materials come from across the United States and Mexico. The company shreds the hard plastics into bits the size of cornflakes and densifies the foam; melts them to at least 240 degrees Celsius; and then filters and compresses them until they are pellets each the size of a half-pea, ready to be sold to pipe and plastic bag companies to be reconstructed for service.

In the world of converting cola bottles to long johns, in short, Largent, 29, is a fixer of plastics. Many plastics have long been considered unrecyclable, but the industry has expanded as cities have joined in the action.

With landfills filling up and mechanical innovations allowing different types of plastics to be rapidly sorted, making recycling on a large volume profitable, cities have increasingly provided ways such as blue bins for residents to recycle, according to Rob Krebs, a spokesman for the plastics division of the American Chemistry Council, a Virginia-based trade group.

Plastics take up at least 9 percent of landfill waste. The number of companies doing plastics recycling has grown in turn. According to a May report by the chemistry council, more than 1,790 companies recycle plastics; in 1986, the number hovered around 300.

In the past fiscal year, Austin collected 1,829 tons of plastics, mostly in the form of detergent, soda, milk and water bottles, according to Jill Mayfield, a spokeswoman for the city’s solid waste services.

The plastic gets baled and sold to brokers; last year’s load brought in $787,000. On paper, the cost in manpower and gasoline of collecting sorting materials is more than the city earns from the brokers. But Mayfield said plastic recycling is worthwhile because the city has to take fewer items to the landfill.

Even as the city of Austin weighs whether to ban plastic bags, Largent dreams of a world in which such bags are recycled, even if they’re not biodegradable. In September, a group called the Bag the Bags Coalition began an Austin campaign to stop grocery stores and large retailers from offering petroleum-based plastic shopping bags.

The U.S. uses 100 billion plastic bags a year, and only a tiny portion are recycled, according to the coalition. In April, the Austin City Council decided to study ways to limit the use of plastic bags. “We recycle material they’re considering banning all day long,” Largent said during a tour of his plant earlier this month, where boxes full of foam sit beside bales of plastic bags.

“It costs money to sell garbage,” he said. “If you can separate it, you can sell it to us or give it to us and turn a loss into a profit center for the business.”

Using a pelletizing process that has been around for a half-century, the company, which has sales of about $7 million a year and employs about 50 people, recycled 2.8 million pounds of plastic, or at least 2,000 pounds an hour, in October. (It’s the largest repelletizer in Texas, Largent said.)

A pound of “natural” plastic or transparent plastic sells for about 50 cents; colored plastic sells for 10 cents to 15 cents less a pound. Natural plastic can be colored for any product, Largent said; black pellets can be used for only black plastic.

Although people can drop off certain kinds of plastic products at Cycled Plastics, the bulk of its feedstock comes from companies. “I can’t go door to door to everyone’s house and say, ‘What plastics do you have?’ ” he said. “We’re in this for the money, obviously, but it also has an environmental upside.”

By ASHER PRICE Austin American-Statesman

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)