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56

BizVoice/Indiana Chamber – July/August 2017

Revving Up Recycling’s ‘Economic Engine’

SALVAGING FOR

SECOND CHANCES

There’s no time to waste.

Recycle. Reuse. Reduce. Renew.

Now.

Recycling isn’t reserved for the

environmentally conscious. It also impacts the

economy.

According to a study commissioned by

the Indiana Recycling Coalition (IRC), over

92% of what gets thrown away in Indiana is

valuable recyclable and compostable material.

The same report –

The Untapped Job

Potential of Indiana’s Recycling Industry

,

conducted by the Bowen Center for Public

Affairs at Ball State University – reveals that a

25% increase in recycling could create

10,000 new jobs.

In addition, approximately 66% of

what’s landfilled or incinerated is not just

garbage, but a commodity that manufacturers

refer to as “recycled content feedstock.”

Examples include paper, plastic and metals.

First-term Indiana Rep. Carey Hamilton

(D-Indianapolis), who serves as the IRC’s

executive director, says education is essential.

“What we continue to work on is

making sure that communities know there’s a

lot of in-state demand for recycled

commodities,” she emphasizes. “In Indiana,

we still have a relatively low recycling rate. If

we can increase our recycling in Indiana, we

will directly support these manufacturers.

We’ll create new jobs all around the state to

get that material ready to send to them.”

High-tech paper mills, refineries and

more are poised to revitalize Indiana’s recycling

industry. All are powered by innovation.

Breaking ground, bringing jobs

Georgia-based Pratt Industries has a

culture that’s “steeped in sustainability,” says

Midwest region vice president and general

manager Paul England.

He adds that it has a dominant play in

the Indiana marketplace, with a 100%

recycled paper mill (one of four it operates

nationwide) and corrugated packaging plant

in Valparaiso and a recycling facility in Gary.

In 2016, Pratt opended the $270 million

Valparaiso paper mill.

“What we do is, me and my team go out

and secure 500,000 tons a year,” England

explains. “We give it to our paper mill in

Valparaiso and they make paper. That paper

goes in a tunnel across maybe 20 yards to the

largest corrugated box plant in the world.

They make boxes. They ship those boxes to

companies like Amazon, FedEx and Home

Depot and Kroger, and on and on.

“The very cool thing is that they deliver

those boxes. My team picks up all of their

recycling and brings it back, and we do it all

over again. It’s called closing the loop. And a

large portion of the fiber we consume at our

paper mill is from our customers,” he

continues. “When I talk to customers about

closing the loop and bringing back their

recyclables, it resonates with them like you

would not believe! It’s a big part of what we

do. It’s a big value proposition. And it’s great

for our customers.”

All about the bottles

Perpetual Recycling Solutions, located in

Richmond, creates clean PET (polyethylene

terephthalate) flakes from the plastic beverage

bottles and food containers discarded by

consumers.

Launched in 2012, it employs 73 at its

125,000-square-foot facility.

“We recycle about 120 million pounds of

material a year and I expect that to go up in the

future – not down,” observes chief executive

officer Peter Zurkow. “If I loosely work into

that (it equals around) three billion bottles.

“If you draw a line from eastern

Michigan to us and then to Huntsville,

Alabama, that makes us sort of the western

outpost. There’s not another facility doing

what we’re doing until California.”

Perpetual’s largest customers are

thermoformer sheet manufacturers.

“People that make the clear clam shells

that you buy your sandwich in at the

supermarket or you buy a fruit platter from

the grocery store,” he discloses. “Those are

our biggest customers. For us, the goal is

food-grade applications. That’s what we’re

set up to do. We’re set up to create a level of

decontamination that makes the product

reusable in the food-grade world.”

Pumped about plastic

Stephen Hogan, president and CEO of

GEP Fuel & Energy Indiana, is passionate

when describing the company’s $300 million

recycling project in Indiana.

There are two components: a recycling

center and an adjacent plastics-to-diesel refinery

near Camden. The undertaking will create up

to 256 high-wage jobs in Carroll County by 2020.

“We want to have a good, stable

workforce that can be with us long term

because we don’t want to constantly go

through the cost of retraining,” Hogan

By Symone C. Skrzycki

“If we can increase our recycling in

Indiana, we will directly support these

manufacturers (of recycled commodities).

We’ll create new jobs all around the

state to get that material ready to

send to them.”

Carey Hamilton

Energy and the Environment