Environmentalists and legislators have long been criticizing bottle water suppliers as their products are increasingly being found in landfills. The bottling companies have been asked to reduce their environmental footprint.
Major bottling companies like Nestle Waters North America and Cliffstar Corporation resorted to recycling of off-spec performs and blown bottles and post consumer bottles. Tampa, Fla.-based Commercial Plastics Recycling, Inc. worked in conjunction to develop a solution that would increase the percentage of recycled materials.
Surprisingly, the Commercial Plastic Recycling program (CPR) yielded considerable savings and additional income. Municipal waste disposal fees were drastically reduced. In fact, Nestle witnessed a drop in county taxes levied. The taxes dropped from $124,000 to $5,000 annually and also the waste at their facilities dropped from over 30 tons per month to 10 tons. In addition, Nestle also earned income from the recycled plastic.
This clearly demonstrated that for any recycling program at a bottling manufacturer to be a success, one needed to look beyond the bottles at the larger savings and the impressive gains. The place for all unnecessary plastic is in the trash. Once that is identified, the source can be traced and a collection point recommended. Nestle and Cliffstar recognized that post industrial bottles accounted for over 75 percent of all the recyclable materials that were found in the bottling facilities.
There is no doubt that there is a large potential for dramatic savings in the recycling of post industrial bottles and beverage bottlers can explore the possibility of profitable beverage bottler recycling by visiting the display tables during the NOVA-PACK 2011 table top exhibition.
The NOVA-PACK 2011 conference will take place on Jan. 26-27, 2011 at the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, near Jacksonville, Fla. Other details can be had from the website.
Mini Swamy is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Jaclyn Allard