IRG CEO Mitch Hecht touts promise of plastics recycling coming to Erie

The Biden Administration's Environmental Protection Agency recently released an aggressive plan: "National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution," which builds upon its 2019 National Recycling Strategy aimed at increasing, to 50%, our nation's recycling rate for plastics by 2030.

The strategy focuses on advancing efforts and technologies to reduce, reuse, collect, and capture plastic waste. As the EPA recognizes, the current recycling rate is woefully inadequate. New, innovative approaches and improved infrastructure are needed to prevent material from entering our environment.

Erie will be a leader in this effort as IRG is going to build the country's first SuperPRF™ ("PRF" = Plastics Recovery Facility).

The SuperPRF, to be constructed on Erie's east side on a former Hammermill Paper site, will revolutionize the recycling of plastics by accepting all forms of post-use plastics including cups, lids, tubs, single-use plastics, drink containers, and milk cartons from residential and commercial sources. This will be a first for the United States. More material accepted in the recycling bin means more material is recovered and recycled.

Our team was troubled by recent reports of a facility in Indiana where a fire broke out and belched harmful smoke for miles. The incident in Indiana was dangerous and inexcusable — but, importantly, it did not involve a recycling plant. This was a scrap trading warehouse unlawfully hoarding waste material without safeguards, for which it was cited numerous times without ever being shut down.

Another view:Industrial disasters raise questions about Erie plastics recycling plans

Our Erie plant is a manufacturing facility, not a waste handling facility. Recycling facilities, like the facility IRG will be building, are completely safe. Recycling manufacturing plants carefully control inventory of compact bales of plastic under roof, with sophisticated heat detection and fire suppression systems, and do not accept piles of waste for warehousing.

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According to Fire Rover, a fire suppression equipment company that compiles such data, since 2019, there were 34 reported incidents "involving smoke and/or flames present" nationally at what are being characterized as recycling facilities. These occurred at material recovery facilities or "MRFs." These MRFs collect piles of waste material from the surrounding community — they are not plastic recycling plants. In fact, catastrophic fires at plastics recycling plants are so rare that the 50 or so recycling plants operating in the U.S. have not reported a fire since 2019.

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Well-funded marketing campaigns are perpetuating the myth that plastics cannot be recycled. The main beneficiaries of this narrative — sometimes embraced by a small fraction of the environmental community reasonably concerned about plastic pollution — are the trash haulers and landfill owners protecting billions in profits by thwarting recycling efforts. The anti-recycling message is harming efforts that encourage people to recycle and driving more plastics into trash cans that end up in cheap landfills. This is why one of the EPA's key goals is to enhance education and outreach to the public on the value of recycling and how to recycle properly.

The fact is 30% — almost one in three drink bottles — are recycled, and in most cases back into a new bottle. These are the bottles that have a "1" in the recycling triangle on the bottom. The same ratio goes for thicker, more rigid bottles, like milk and water jugs and household cleaning and shampoo bottles with the number "2" in the triangle.

And while it's true that nationally only about 9% of all plastics that enter the municipal solid waste stream are recycled — and that's an incredibly low number — that includes everything made from plastic; from your phone and laptop to your car, your furniture, your appliances, and your clothing.

It has been said that two-thirds of every item we come into contact with during our waking hours is made from plastics. This is part of our modern world because plastic is the most versatile material ever created. It's infinitely formable, inexpensive to produce, prevents the spread of disease in our hospitals, prevents food wastage, and uses less carbon emissions to manufacture and transport than any other material. But we must recycle it if we're to prevent plastic from becoming pollution at the end of its useful life.

IRG, with its sister company, newBin, aims to ensure not a pound of plastic goes into a landfill or the environment — while creating hundreds of new jobs in Erie. Through recycling, IRG will support the manufacturing of plastic products at manufacturers in Erie, like Plastek, that contain high percentages of recycled material.

The amount of plastic America loses to landfills each year represents half a billion barrels of oil. Every pound of plastics that is recycled replaces a pound of virgin plastic made from drilling for oil and gas. Recycling is one of the most critical components in the fight against climate change.

Bottom line: more needs to be done to reduce, reuse and, yes, recycle our way to needlessly make more plastics and eliminate them from our environment. We must all contribute to the success of this essential effort.

You can learn more about the EPA's Draft National Strategy to Reduce Plastic Pollution at https://www.epa.gov/circulareconomy/draft-national-strategy-prevent-plastic-pollution — the more you know, the more you can help.

Mitch Hecht is the founder, chairman and CEO of International Recycling Group (IRG).