Dive Brief:
- Pratt Industries has opened its new material recovery facility (MRF) at its base in Conyers, GA. The system, designed to recover mixed fiber, also can process single-stream, commercial, and industrial material and commercial old corrugated containers (OCC). Pratt is the fifth largest corrugated box company in the U.S.
- Machinex of Plessisville, Quebec, designed the system to process material at 25 to 30 tons per hour (TPH). The system, which has since been tested at 32 TPH, can also recover non-recyclables for use in the waste-to-energy gasification plant that is on Pratt's same campus.
- Also at the facility: a shredder, a heavy-light separator, three ferrous magnets, two nonferrous separators, a drum feeder, a back-scraping drum, a truck loading station. The system also uses Machinex’s MACH Ballistic Separator and three MACH HyspecTM optical units to sort polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), fiber and aseptic packaging.
Dive Insight:
Pratt's Kurt Schmitz told Recycling Today, "The system will enable us to process a variety of streams, producing paper for our on-site mill and fuel for our clean energy plant, which is also on-site. This facility is a key component in expanding our eco-campus capabilities.”
In July, Waste Dive reported that there is an estimated $11.4 billion of post-consumer packaging that is "wasted" each year, meaning that it does not get recycled properly — regardless of if it's sent to an MRF. Therefore, flexibility is key at MRFs as so much recyclable material is wasted and the cost of disposing recyclable materials is taking a toll on companies in the industry. Efficiency and flexibility at MRFs can increase recycling as well as opportunities for revenue.
