Your Bottle Means Jobs
This guest blog is courtesy of Chantal Fryer, Director, Recycling Market Development, South Carolina Department of Commerce.
From where I sit at the SC Department of Commerce Recycling Market Development program, I help promote the message that recyclers may be familiar with, but the public is not, i.e. “Recycling doesn’t just help the environment, it helps the economy!” In my capacity, I serve as volunteer staff to the Carolinas Plastics Recycling Council (CPRC), a public/private initiative whose goal is to increase plastics recycling in North and South Carolina. The issue is demand for recycled bottles exceeds the supply here in the Southeast. Recycled bottle material collected for recycling in our states is only enough bottle supply for the recyclers to run their manufacturing processes for 2 days. SC is a major player in the recycled PET fiber industry with processing and end-use manufacturers such as PolyQuest, US Fibers, Sun Fiber, Palmetto Synthetics, E-Z Products, Southeast Grinding and Samuel Strapping. North…