Building capacity to recycle hundreds of millions of pounds per year
Meet Alan: One of America’s Change Makers
“The whole plastics industry is in a massive transformation.”
Alan has been working at NOVA Chemicals, one of the world’s largest plastic makers, for decades.
“In order for our entire industry to be successful, we need to very much ensure that the materials we make, and our customers make, don’t end up in the environment where they shouldn’t be.”
Opportunity to Recycle Lots of Plastic
When offered the opportunity to do something about that, he didn’t hesitate. Today, as NOVA’s director of mechanical recycling, he oversees a massive new facility that is designed to recycle plastic. A lot of plastic. And keep it out of landfills and our environment.
“We’re getting ready to recycle over 100 million pounds of plastic films per year when our new facility is operational. And these materials have incredible value. And so when I was afforded the opportunity to play a role in establishing NOVA’s strategy for making sure that our plastics retain their value over and over again, I jumped at the chance.”
The facility he oversees in Connersville, IN, covers about a half a million square feet. That’s the size of more than seven U.S. football fields.
Alan will be collecting plastic film from multiple sources throughout the Midwest.
“Plastic films are going to come from a variety of different places. They’ll come from grocery store chains, from distribution centers, from the back of stores, all kinds of different films that ultimately, without recycling, would end up in the landfill. Our objective for this facility is to recycle all of that film into new plastic that can be made into a whole variety of new things.”
New Technologies Help Plastic Recycling
This is not your grandfather’s recycling facility. Mechanical recycling technologies – the process of sorting and physically converting used plastic into new plastic – have evolved.
“Recycling technologies have come a long way in the last 20 or 30 years.”
“The mechanical recycling process starts with the bales of used plastic that come into this facility. They will be broken down and put on a conveyor belt. We need high technology and very special equipment to be able to sort out products. Along that conveyor belt will be a series of optical sorters essentially using artificial intelligence to sort the plastics we can use at our company from the plastics that can be used in other products like asphalt or decking and things like that.”
“Our material continues into a washing process to remove surface contamination and labels and glue and those sorts of things. From there, it’s processed into pellets and then goes into a vessel where odor is removed. And then it goes into silos and off to our customers.”
Who’s going to buy this recycled plastic?
“What’s interesting about the recycling businesses is that our customers are the same people that provide the used plastic.
Retailers, brands, distribution centers and consumers are the same people that ultimately will receive the recycled material again. And so it creates this circular opportunity.”
Transforming Plastic… and the Industry
Alan can trace the transformation in the industry and the progression in recycling and improved sustainability over two generations.
“My father was a chemical engineer and spent his entire career in the plastics industry. I’ve been involved in plastics my entire life. And so the opportunity to be able to translate all of that experience, to provide the opportunity to put recycled material back into products and keep it out of the environment, that’s super exciting for me.”
“I would hope that my father would be excited to see the way the industry is transforming and being able to not only provide plastic products that provide immense value, but now we’re taking those finished products and we’re allowing them to have another life. I think he’d be pretty proud about that.”
We wish Alan and his team continued success.