Molding the future

Even though the company has only been recycling materials for a few years, East Jordan Plastics in Michigan has found a way to turn old horticultural products into new business.

The company started manufacturing wooden greenhouse flats in 1947, but the family business switched to plastic materials during the 1960s, says Nathan Diller, recycling manager. It built on with pots, flats and plug trays at the East Jordan and Beaverton facilities. With the addition of the South Haven plant in 2009, the company branched out to create new products from old materials.

Used horticultural plastics didn’t have much worth, nor were they easily recycled, since growing media could contaminate the material. But the company saw a chance to make a brand new feed of plastic for injection-molded and thermoformed products, says Diller.

“It’s a significant process in turning used horticultural containers into a clean, usable raw material,” he explains. “The value of the material as a clean feedstock made that process feasible. We started that operation in 2009 with the sole purpose being recycling.”

East Jordan Plastics partnered with a few key growers in the area during its first year, collecting used containers like plug and propagation trays. They pay to take growers’ scrap material once they’ve collected about a truckload, separated into polypropylene, high-density polyethylene and polystyrene. Consolidated and cleaned, the material serves as a cost-effective consumer material, says Diller.

The company also made use of a recycling effort at Home Depot, where consumers return used containers to the garden center after planting. The containers not fit for outright reuse were consolidated for pickup and repurposing.

“We feel as though the most sustainable horticultural container is one that is made from recycled plastic,” says Diller, “not only post-consumer and post-industrial plastics, but post-horticultural plastics. We wanted to help close the loop on the lifecycle of horticultural containers.”

The used material is brought back to the South Haven plant, where it is turned into a clean regrind to be used for manufacturing. In the first year, the company recycled more than five million pounds of used horticultural containers into new injection-molded products. This year, it’s on track to recycle 12 million pounds, with room to expand operations as needed.

Want to know more? East Jordan Plastics, www.eastjordanplastics.com.