KINGSPORT, Tenn. and CINCINNATI, Ohio, Feb. 8, 2024 /CNW/ — Leading North American recycler, Rumpke Waste & Recycling (Rumpke) and molecular recycling pioneer Eastman, today announced a groundbreaking partnership to help address the global plastic waste crisis. Later this year, Rumpke will begin collecting and sorting hard-to-recycle and colored PET packaging waste, materials that are largely unaddressed in today’s recycling ecosystem and will provide 100 percent of this waste stream as feedstock to Eastman’s molecular recycling process. Eastman will then turn this waste stream into virgin quality polyesters with its molecular recycling technology to be used across a range of packaging applications and to expand the circular economy for polyesters.
“The world is currently grappling with a significant problem, with a large portion of plastic waste either not being collected for recycling, or is considered non-recyclable by traditional methods,” said Jeff Snyder, director of recycling at Rumpke. “This partnership creates a new market for hard-to-recycle colored and opaque waste that is not currently recycled today.”
Colored and opaque PET is used across a range of …