Recycling Organizations of North America

RONA hosted its first markets' forum in the spring, highlighting plastic recycling market challenges and issues. Despite a few technological glitches during this, our first webinar, participants found the session insightful and thought provoking. The webinar format was free and open to all interested participants. Particularly in light of the many important issues raised in the webinar, RONA has pledged to follow this event with subsequent webinars.

• The State of the Plastic Market - Patty Moore of Moore Recycling Associates discussed the current market place.  Her presentation looked not only at the stalwarts PET and HDPE, but also examined prospects for #3-#7 bottles and other non-bottle rigid containers.
• A New Way to Collect PLA Biodegradable Plastics - BIOCOR Executive Director Mike Centers discussed their plans to develop a processing infrastructure to recover as much PLA as possible. Plastic reclaimers fear that this new infrastructure will be difficult to establish, while bioresin manufacturers see their product as an environmentally sound product.
• Challenges and Obstacles - Steve Alexander and Liz Bedard from the Association of Post-consumer Plastic Recyclers (APR) updated particpants on the struggles and challenges confronting collectors, processors and end users, including problems with mislabeling of plastics, supply issues related to domestic and overseas marketplace dynamics, and concerns over the new biodegradable plastic PLA.

Click on the presentation title ablove to view the webinar PowerPoints.  Thanks again to our panelists.