Collecting at big events
But beverage companies have easy access to their old bottles. Coca-Cola collected discarded bottles at a NASCAR event in Atlanta in November and at the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Coke sent the NASCAR plastic to a recycler; it will use the Olympics plastic itself.
But experts say that only bottle bills can give small companies access to the 4 billion PET bottles that end up on roadsides or in landfills each year.
"The bottles are there, but getting them is a problem," said John Kokoszka, EvCo's vice president for operations.
The problems are even greater for those who want to reuse plastics from durable goods like computers. They contain blends of plastics, metals, glues and additives that are hard to separate. And, discarded bottles are usually a few months old. Discarded durables vary in age by decades, and can include plastics that are no longer used.
A few companies anticipated that problem. In the 1990s, IBM began using the same plastic in several products, making the machines easier to recycle. Three years ago IBM introduced the IntelliStation E Pro, a desktop computer with plastic parts comprised almost entirely of recycled resins.
"We wanted to demonstrate that using recycled plastics was viable," said Wayne Balta, IBM's vice president for corporate environmental affairs.
Balta said that IBM's goal was to eventually use recycled resins in most products.
Those goals may yet be attainable. Recycling companies are already experimenting with optical recognition technology and electric charges to separate plastics, and with solvents that remove glues and labels.
"Technology is no longer the major barrier to recycling," said Michael Fisher, director of technology for the American Plastics Council. "People have to figure a way around the collection problems."
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