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Post Consumer Recycled Bags
One of the biggest myths circulating around the plastic bag debate is that plastic bags are not recyclable. This is simply NOT true. Plastic bags are difficult to recycle because consumers are not aware of how to recycle them. As a result, many waste haulers refuse to accept plastic bags via curbside recycling. This article is about the viability of using these collected plastics in the bags we sell.
Post Consumer Recycled Plastics are referred to as PCR. Depending on the sources of PCR, bag manufacturers have the ability to add PCR content to bags during production. In the early 1990's resin companies actually collected PCR and integrated it into the resin manufacturing process to offer extruders (a pre-mixed Virgin-PCR pellet). Lack of demand, falling resin prices, and consistency issues, made the PCR market for film and bags challenging. Ultimately resin companies stopped offering these products.
Today, the market and infrastructure is far more mature and sophisticated with many local recyclers of plastic products. Products such as plastic trash bags, agriculture film, construction film, pails and containers have used PCR for many years. For the burgeoning plastic lumber market, clean PCR material, particularly bags are a very sought after raw material. It was reported by one manufacturer of plastic lumber that their demand for PCR was as much as 300 million pounds per year.
Since the grocery sack market reported to have used 1 billion pounds annually, if a 30% recycling rate were to occur, there would be adequate demand for this product.
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