PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Executive Director, executive.director@nerc.org
Date: January 17, 2020

North American Recycled Plastic Processing Capacity Increases – New Report Published

The Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) announces the publication of new summary of announced plastic processing capacity increases, as a companion to its Summary of Announced Increased Capacity to Use Recycled Paper. The document lists increases in North American capacity to process recyclable plastics into products such as plastic lumber, pellets or resins for end-markets.  These increases were announced or completed in 2017 or later.   

This list was developed from several resources, including More Recycling, The Recycling Partnership, Plastic Recycling Update, Recycling Today, Resource Recycling, Waste Dive, Waste 360, company press releases, local newspaper articles, as well as the Indiana Recycling Coalition, and Georgia Recycling Coalition. This is the first document of its type.  As new information is available, the report will be updated.

The report identifies 15 new and 10 expanding facilities that will process plastic.  The majority of the new or expanded capacity is planned for the west coast (6 in California, 1 in Nevada, 1 in British Columbia), and the south (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina (4), and Texas).  Three facilities have been announced for the Northeast (2 in Pennsylvania, and 1 in New Jersey), with three in the mid-west (1 in Indiana and 2 in Ohio). The facilities will use a variety of plastics, with LDPE (nine facilities) having the most reported new capacity.  It is important to note that these are announced capacity investments, but not a guarantee that these facilities will open or expand as projected.   

The compilation was produced by the NERC-NEWMOA Regional Recycling Markets Committee.  The Committee’s goal is to identify and implement strategies to promote and enhance recycling markets in the region.  This list will be updated as new capacity is announced or new information received.  If you have information about capacity expansions not listed here or corrections to the information on this list, please contact Chaz Miller, Chair, NERC-NEWMOA Regional Recycling Markets Committee, chazmiller9@gmail.com, 301-346-6507, or Lynn Rubinstein, Executive Director, NERC.

A summary of the report appears in the following table.