Tray, tray again
Sustainability and Marketing Director of Dordan Manufacturing Chandler Slavin discusses the business case for hospitals to recycle PETG medical trays.
Plastic is a necessity for packaging products for its cost and performance, yet it is also an environmental nuisance because it persists in our natural environment. While consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, the largest contributors to global plastic packaging waste, work with industry, government, and environmental stakeholders to address the plastic waste problem, they have a long and challenging road ahead. This is because the economics of recycling much post-consumer packaging do not make for a compelling business case, as the cost of collection, sortation, and reprocessing typically outweighs the cost of virgin material production. Though the Ellen Macarthur Foundation is working to change this, by infusing post-consumer plastics with its virgin value such that it is seen as worthy of recovery, actualizing the ‘New Plastics Economy’ will require a fundamental remake to the way we produce and consume products and services.
Opportunities for recycling some post-consumer plastic packaging do exist, however. For instance, from 2009 to 2015, Dordan Manufacturing, a thermoformer of consumer and medical packaging, helped make clamshells recyclable. This was accomplished by incorporating PET clamshells into the exiting PET bottle recycling system. By piggy-backing on an already established recycling market, where the demand for PET recyclate exceeded the collected supply, recycling clamshells provided value to recyclers, and therefore became recyclable. The likelihood that a package is recyclable, therefore, depends on the amount generated in the waste stream, the cost of collection, sortation, and reprocessing, and the existence of end markets for the recyclate.
Unlike recycling much post-consumer plastic packaging, medical packaging – and specifically PETG trays – is easy to recycle. Because of this, recycling medical packaging provides a revenue stream for hospitals to capitalize on. Through an understanding of the economics of waste management, hospitals can develop a program that diverts medical packaging from landfill, reducing costs and positioning the healthcare provider as a sustainability champion in the community.
Recycling medical packaging is independent of the municipally managed and tax-payer-funded, post-consumer stream. It is managed at the commercial level, which means that the hospital is responsible for finding a home for its waste. The cost to hospitals of collecting and sorting PETG trays for resale requires no investment, outside of employee training and the implementation of a container recovery program. Hospitals offer a single point of collection and sortation, providing incentive to buyers of recycled materials to establish partnerships. Recyclers want a consistent and high-quality supply of material that is easy clean, bale, and resale for profit. PETG trays – the predominant type of medical packaging for medical devices – are made of high-quality plastic. Medical device manufacturers, who sell to hospitals, purchase them in high volume. Because hospitals control the procurement of their medical products, and arguably, the type of packaging being used, opportunity exists to ensure that there is an ample and consistent supply of PETG trays available for resale to recyclers.
Dordan is an expert in designing and manufacturing medical packaging for recycling. The third-generation family owned and operated custom thermoformer provides its medical customers with the tools and resources needed to establish a recycling program with hospitals and healthcare facilities. By recycling PETG tray packaging, hospitals are able to reduce waste management costs, redefine its relationship with the products it purchases, and contribute to the circular economy.