Fall 2012 Issue - Colby-Sawyer College

The average food distribution
facility puts around
200,000 pounds of this
product into a landfill every
month.
Pelech’s experiments
resumed—this time in his
own lab instead of his
backyard. Finally, at two in
the morning of another
sleepless night, he and
Mike Mooney ’02, Poly
Recovery’s general manager,
had what Pelech
calls their eureka moment.
They added a few more
things to the baloney
plastic—yogurt cups,
shopping bags, stretch
film, automotive bumpers
—and were able to extrude
a uniform product that
is now used as a longerlasting
alternative to
petroleum-based rubber
curb stops and speed
bumps. Poly Recovery was
poised on the cutting edge
of recycling’s possibilities.
Cradle to Grave
to Cradle
There are seven categories
of plastic. Water and soda
bottles are in category 1,
and according to Pelech,
America recycles them at a
rate of 20 percent. Milk
jugs and laundry detergent
containers fall into
category 2 and are hot
commodities because they
can be turned back into
bottles, carpet, pipe or any
number of products.
Then there are the
3-7s, a smorgasbord of
polymers, and the majority
of what fills America’s
recycling bins.
“Category 7 is the greatest
challenge to recycling
because it includes everything
from dashboard
plastic to bullet-proof
glass, which is polycarbonate,”
says Pelech. “Some
of the items are worth
huge money, but we send
99 percent of them to Asia
on container ships. They
actually burn those plastics
for fuel because it’s
cheaper than oil and gives
a higher BTU per dollar,
which is a disaster.”
Instead of letting plastics
sail off to the other side
of the planet or end up in a
landfill because it “can’t”
be recycled, Poly Recovery
conducts recycling audits
for businesses and looks
for opportunities to turn
their waste into new products.
These days, manufacturers
are calling on
Pelech to recycle their
paper and plastic waste at
Poly Recovery with the
promise that it will travel
no more than 100 miles to
be turned into a new
product. With 100-plus
clients, among them seven
of the region’s 10 biggest
manufacturers, it’s a
promise that resonates
with companies who
are increasingly aware of
sustainability issues
and their impact on the
local economy, and
who don’t want to pay a
trash hauler to dump
their waste in a landfill.
A resin that Poly Recovery
produces, for example,
goes into flower pots
made in Massachusetts;
paper and cardboard go
to a partner in Fitchburg,
Mass., and is turned into
game boards and the
backs of legal pads;
another material travels
11.8 miles down the road
and is extruded into
polyester fiber that is spun
into car trunk liner and
brand-name performance
wear.
“I’ve said it from the
beginning, it’s our waste,”
says Pelech. “Why do we
want to ship it somewhere
else? We created it. Let’s
keep it here, let’s keep the
jobs here. That adds so
much more to our social
and economic sustainability,
never mind our environmental
sustainability
portion of it. We could
make a hell of a lot more
money if we just sent
stuff to China, but I don’t
want to do that. If I keep
the stuff here I’m different
from everyone else. We
are plastics processors
and we are good at it. We
are damn good at it.”
They are so good that
Pelech is running a second
shift and production line
now; he expects nearly
eight million pounds of
waste to flow through Poly
Recovery this year on its
way to reincarnation.
Early nights and enough
sleep aren’t necessarily
part of the future, though,
because Pelech is running
high on passion and is
just getting started.
“I’m working on
Styrofoam next,” says
Pelech. “It’s tough.
The largest densified
Styrofoam buyer is
China. Let’s keep it all
here. I don’t know why
more people don’t
do it. There should be a
Poly Recovery every
200 miles. That would
mean no landfills…
Imagine that!”
Spring 2012
57