Disposing of Coro Scrap...

[mjohnsonsa]

None of the recycling companies in my area will take Coroplast scrap so I am curious for those of you who are routing a lot of it how you dispose of it? I have read about Plastic Granulators but they are very $$$ and nothing I have read says how they work with coroplast in waste reduction. Any tips would be appreciated, the stuff is so bulky it would quickly fill a trash bin so really looking to see how others in the community deal with their plastic scrap.

Matt

 

[ikarasu]

Why will they not take it? Tell them it's resin code 5, and any place that takes plastic should be Able to take it. We can even drop ours off at the bottle depots here.

When we inquired most didn't know what it was... We had to find the code it's recycled under, then pretty much everyone agreed. Maybe your recyclers don't know what type of plastic it is?

 

[mjohnsonsa]

I will try calling back and ask about resin code 5 and see if that makes a difference. I tried doing a search and found some sites that said Coroplast is polypro and some saying it is polyethylene do you know which it is?

Matt

Why will they not take it? Tell them it's resin code 5, and any place that takes plastic should be Able to take it. We can even drop ours off at the bottle depots here.

When we inquired most didn't know what it was... We had to find the code it's recycled under, then pretty much everyone agreed. Maybe your recyclers don't know what type of plastic it is?

 

[TimToad]

The reality is that most recycling efforts in the U.S. have always been heavily dependent on exporting the materials to China for reprocessing. In retaliation for imposing new tariffs on Chinese imports, China has shut down most of the marketplace for those materials and there is very little domestic capability to deal with the enormous amount of material we as the world's most disposable society create.

It's ironic on multiple fronts as some point their fingers at China and India for their contributions to climate change while we have shipped most of our garbage to them to deal with over the last couple decades while still being the world's largest emitter of climate change pollutants.

 

[ikarasu]

To be honest I'm not sure which it is. I'm sure each manufacturer has their own composition of materials... But generally they're all recyclable. Most recycling places hear coroplast or alupanel and they don't know what it is, so it's easier to say no.

We had about 300 screenprinted coro signs before remax changed their logo - they were all garbage and couldn't be used anymore. Called 4-5 recyclers and all said no. Then one finally said he's not sure, he'll look into it - he found the recycle code and said he'll take them. Out of.curioisity I called 2 of the others back with the code... And they said yes they do take them.

Sadly we haven't found anyone who can do alupanel. They market it as recyclable... And I believes there's ONE shop in the world who can do it. The others ask us to break the aluminum skins off the plastic and separate them, then They'll take it. An hour later... We just threw them all in the garbage.

Same with vinyl cores - we load them up by the skid and call a recycle company to come grab them. We get a 5ft high skid every two weeks... Costs us $20 a skid for them to come pick it up. It beats throwing them into the garbage... And that's another item no one would take... Until one saw the recyclable triangle with the code. Now they all will...

Canada may be different though. We have a couple recyclers every 10 km to make drop off easy. We have weekly pickups for anything plastic at our house for free. You actually get a $300 fine if they catch you throwing away a banana peel, let alone a plastic can. They make sure everything is as easy to recycle as possible, otherwise people would be protesting and pissed off at how strict they are with garbage and recycling.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I had a hand in recycling computer components years ago... Here in the US, we have environmental laws preventing the economically feasible recycling of a lot of these materials.

Most places in the USA charged to take CRT monitors because you couldn't even throw them in the trash can due to the lead. We'd collect and fill containers of CRTs, get a trucking company to take it to a port in Houston and send it on a ship to China. They'd pay $1 per unit and we charged $25 per to accept it.. Was a sweet deal.

China would take them because they don't care what happens in the process of breaking that stuff down. You couldn't get the valuable material out of CRTs because the lead was embedded in the glass tubes and it couldn't be done without getting that stuff everywhere. AT LEAST not in the USA where we have laws preventing such activity. China doesn't have those laws, doesn't care about the people that do it and where it gets dumped.

So to say that lovely eco-friendly China is helping out our wasteful society recycle is a bit of a stretch. They'd rather pollute their own land and put their own people at risk in order to gain that extra penny of material out of our trash... Something we realized couldn't be safely done.

Why some folks want to constantly believe what "we" do is wrong I'll never understand.... "We're bad and wasteful, other people have it right and we are just wasteful stupid raciest unequal society pigs" Why do you constantly want to think the worse of yourself?

 

[Gino]

It's just a mindset with some people.

Anyway, we have 5 large bins in back of our shop. One for ACM, one for aluminum, one for poly stuff, one for cardboard and one for Cor-X. When they're full, they come pick them up and we get paid for saving it for them. Not a bad deal. Only drawback is, they wanna pick up all 5 at once. That is tough to do.

 

[ikarasu]

In BC we havE a fee called EHF fee.

Eevrytine you buy anything electronic.. Such as a TV over 30" we pay $28. Think it's under 20 for smaller.

That money is used to pay for depots and the cost to transit and recycle the materials. It's like a hidden tax.. It allows us to drop off any material at one of the hundreds of.recy le depots in the city for "free".... Because we ready paid for it.

It doesn't say where they go... But it doe say every facility it deals with had to meet their recyclable standards to recycle responsibly. Of course that probably means they call China, tell them an inspector is coming... Give them 6 months before they come.. Then inspect everything in perfect conditions and repeat the process every 20 years.


You can only do what you can though. Some municipalitys don't even offer recycling, so not much you can do.

Sometimes There's no other options...maybe all this plastic ends up in the ocean or in China landfills, but maybe not. At least this way there's a small chance it doesn't!

 

[James Burke]

Cut it into small pieces and SELL it to Cricut users....they'll be ecstatic!


JB

 

[Johnny Best]

 

[kcollinsdesign]

Coroplast is certainly recyclable. It is polypropylene; the same material cottage cheese containers are made of.

The bigger problem is finding a commercial recycler. Most local communities will not take commercial waste. Community household recycling is subsidized by tax money. The last few years the costs have risen dramatically because China and other countries no longer want or need our recyclable materials. Cardboard, at present in our market, is negative 4¢ per pound. I found our local recycling agency was paying $80.00/ton for some guy with a flatbed to "take it away" (likely to some un-authorized landfill).

Commercial recyclers will buy polypropylene, but they are much more interested in commercial waste from factories that make polypropylene products, which can run into tons daily. If you can find one that will come out and pick up your coroplast scraps, you will likely have to pay for the convenience, and the only money you will save is the landfill tipping fee (usually around $30/ton).

If you are generating a few pounds per day, It is a much more economically and environmentally sound practice to just throw your scrap plastic in the dumpster.