BOISE, Idaho — Finally, a home for Treasure Valley plastic recyclables. Las Vegas polymer plant will begin receiving Idaho plastic in February.
- Boise Republic Services Recycling Center processes 170 tons of materials a day.
- All qualified plastic from the Treasure Valley will go to new polymer center in Las Vegas starting in February.
- Republic Services plans to build 5-6 polymer recycling centers across the country. Las Vegas is the first
- Next center is being built in Indianapolis, IN.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story.)
It’s hard to imagine the massive scope of the recycling stream in the Treasure Valley until you see the nonstop daily action at the Republic Services sorting center which processes 170 tons of recycling materials daily.
"This is the last conveyor belt. We've got all our containers on here that are aluminum and plastic," said operations manager, Chuck Root while giving me a tour of the Boise recycling center.
Plastic has been a recyclable material without a permanent home until now. China stopped taking it years ago and other consumers were hit and miss. A new polymer recycling center in Las Vegas though is a game changer.
The polymer recycling center is the first of its kind in the country and it helps sort the plastic even more.
“We’ve sent a couple test bales to our polymer center to make sure that we get some analytics on the quality of the material that we’ll be sending. They said our stuff is really good, it’s good to go and we’re going to be sending our plastics full-time beginning in February,” said Cord Stanley, general manager of Republic Services.
The resulting plastic will be turned largely into new bottles for companies like Coca Cola, but cooperation with cities to educate the public are still on the back burner for now.
"It's really going to be good because the polymer center from what I understand has optical sorters, so it's going to be able to separate it out into different grades which makes it a lot more recyclable,” said Root.
Still, change is less than a month away. Starting in February, Republic Services plans to send anywhere from 5-8 loads of plastic per month at 21 tons per load to the polymer center in Las Vegas.
