North Carolina Takes A Stand!

A few weeks ago, North Carolina banned plastic bottles from their landfills. Yeah! This is great news that will hopefully propel other states to take the same action.

What is behind the ban? It's simple - North Carolina wants to up their recycling. They have a statewide goal of recycling 2 million tons of stuff by 2012. They currently recycle 1.3 million tons so they have quite a lot of work to do and that's where the ban comes in. In a state where only one in five plastic bottles gets recycled, this ban will be a great help.

Having a ban is great, but how will they enforce it? This is always the hard part. It's one thing to say you're going to do something and another thing to actually do it. The ban will be enforced at disposal facilities such as landfills and transfer stations by the N.C. Division of Waste Management. Enforcement will not take place at the actual point of disposal, like homes and businesses, so everyone will have to do their part to ensure that plastic bottles don't end up where they don't belong. Since most garbage is placed in bags prior to being picked up for disposal, I wonder how physically the ban will be enacted. Will the disposal facilities rip open every bag looking for plastic bottles? I think not.

So with all those plastic bottles getting recycled instead of landfilled, what is North Carolina going to do with them? Great question! They are building the nation's largest facility to recycle PET bottles (PET is most commonly used to create water and soda bottles). When completed, the facility will be able to process 280 million pounds of material per year and one of their primary partners will be carpet manufacturer Shaw Industries Group. Shaw will turn recycled PET into polyester for use in carpeting. How cool is that? DAK Americas is also a partner in the recycling venture and they will sell their shares on the open market. The joint venture, Clear Path Recycling, brings together the world's largest carpet manufacturer, Shaw and the second largest PET resin and largest Polyester Staple Fiber producer in the Americas, DAK.

So how big of an impact will recycling 280 million pounds of plastic bottles have on the environment? Would you believe that more than 1 million cubic yards per year of landfill space will be conserved? It's true. That's a lot of space. Also, the energy savings related to the Clear Path Recycling operation is equal to enough energy to power 18,000 U.S. homes for a year. Approximately 100 jobs will also be created and that's really great news.

There are so many ways to use recycled materials. I'm glad that manufacturers are getting creative and starting to use them. By saving precious resources and using what is already available, the cost savings to manufacturers really adds up. The cost savings to Mother Earth is huge as well and she appreciates every little bit she gets.