"Harold,
Thanks for your
patience. ecomaine works very hard to find local markets for its materials. We
prefer to sell to manufactures closest to our facility, when available, in order
to minimize environmental impacts. The majority of our materials are sold in
the US or local markets in Canada. One of our long term plastic buyers is
Graham Packaging in York, PA. We also sell to Envisions Plastics, UltraPET,
and RPM of Canada, depending on what type of plastics we have available for
sale. We do sell a very small fraction of our plastics, primarily #3-#7
plastics, to overseas markets. In years past, on two occasions, I have worked
with the American Chemistry Council to find a domestic market for #3-#7’s
through their database of plastic manufactures. After I received your email I
reached out to them again. Ultimately, I got the same result. The individuals
listed as viable users of this material were brokers who confirmed that they
would be selling this material into overseas markets. They, like us, are
unaware of a viable domestic market for this material.
We share you concerns and
have worked hard to develop relationships with reputable brokers who have
given us every assurance that our materials is not being landfilled and is
truly being responsibly recycled. We trust this is the case, since the
buyers are paying transportation costs to ship this material and would not do so
if they intended to dispose of it. I recognize that we have all heard salacious
horror stories about recycling. I feel confident that ecomaine is doing the
right thing by recycling this material and I also feel reassured about how this
material is being recycled. ecomaine will continue to look for markets closer
to home in order to minimize impacts on the environment, but until that time I
believe we are contributing to the positive aspects of recycling and not the
negative.
ecomaine
64
Blueberry Road
Portland
ME 04102
From: Harold Johnson
Sent: Friday, August 05,
2011 8:27 AM
Subject: Buyers of recycled
bales, U.S. or export?
Dear
Sir/Madam:
I've been studying
plastic pollution and plastic recycling for some time now. And I've noticed that
the trend is for more & more recycled plastic to be sold to export markets,
usually developing nations like China, Vietnam, and India. I've seen the
pictures of what recycling villages in these nations look like, and the
pollution they cause. Sometimes it feels like recycling plastic here causes more
damage over there than if the plastic had just been landfilled or incinerated
here.
It's all led me to
worry what the end result is of most of the plastic I recycle here in Saco. Do
you have a public annual report, or other documents/information, that show where
your recycled bales end up? I'd feel a lot better about continuing -- and
promoting -- plastic recycling in our community if I had facts to show that our
recycled goods are not poisoning fields & streams 12,000 miles
away.
Many thanks for your
time, and for your efforts to reshape "waste" into a valuable
resource.
Sincerely,
Harold
Johnson
"The Flotsam
Diaries"
Saco, ME
04072
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