Hefty EnergyBag Program Expands to Idaho, Georgia

by | Jan 4, 2018

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Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics continues to expand its Hefty EnergyBag program, most recently with two $50,000 grants to organizations in Cobb County, Georgia, and Boise, Idaho. Cobb County and Boise will establish Hefty EnergyBag program in their communities

The grant program, a collaboration with Keep America Beautiful, offers an innovative approach to diverting plastics that are not currently recycled – such as chip bags and juice pouches – from landfills and converting the materials into valuable energy resources. Consumers place these and other plastics into orange Hefty Energy Bags before putting the bags in their recycling bins for collection.

Communities were invited to submit applications and were ranked on criteria including materials recovery facility (MRF) and hauler participation, number of targeted households, availability of existing recycling carts for curbside collection, and accessibility of a suitable end market outlet that will turn the plastics collected into an alternative energy resource.

The two winning communities will provide collected materials to facilities utilizing advanced non-combustion conversion technologies which can generate a liquid fuel, such as diesel. These technologies also have the longer-term potential to generate feedstocks in a closed loop system and can be used to produce new plastics, keeping resources in use and at their highest value and thereby helping create a more circular economy.

Currently most multi-material flexible plastic packaging, along with other types of plastics, are difficult to mechanically recycle due to technical, environmental, and economic challenges so they end up in landfills, Dow points out. The Hefty EnergyBag Program sorts previously non- recycled plastics at a material recycling facility, delivers the sorted materials to an energy conversion facility, and converts them into an energy resource — all using an existing waste management infrastructure.

The program won an Environmental Leader Top Project of the Year Award in 2017.

 

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