Services · S-04
Recycling &
resin recovery.
Short answer
- Granulator and baler on site since 2017
- Regrind sold by the gaylord or truckload with a data sheet
- Hazmat accepted with a manifest; heels to permitted disposal
- Zero units landfilled — verifiable with weigh tickets
Quote recycling
Material recovery
What comes out of a 275-gallon tote
Three streams, three markets, three weigh tickets. This is the arithmetic behind every diversion certificate we issue.
| Stream | Mass per unit | Processing | Destination market |
|---|---|---|---|
| HDPE bottle | 115 lb / 52 kg | Cut, granulated, colour and melt-index sorted | Extruders: pipe, drainage, non-food packaging |
| Galvanised cage | 60 lb / 27 kg | Sheared, baled to mill spec | Electric-arc furnace feedstock |
| Steel base | 38 lb / 17 kg | Reused if sound, otherwise baled | Reuse pool, then EAF feedstock |
| Plastic base | 22 lb / 10 kg | Washed and reused, or granulated | Reuse pool, then regrind |
| Valve and fittings | 2 lb / 0.9 kg | PP separated from EPDM | PP regrind; rubber to crumb |
| Wood base | 46 lb / 21 kg | Repaired, or chipped | Reuse, then biomass or mulch |
- 41,200
- Tons of HDPE kept in service
- 24,600
- Tons of galvanised steel reused
- 0
- Tons landfilled since 2017
- 186,000
- Tons CO₂e avoided
Reused and recovered combined, since 2009
Cages and bases
Verifiable against weigh tickets
Against new-container equivalents
The process
Six stations, and a weigh ticket at each
- 01
Intake and triage
Every inbound unit is assessed for resale, reconditioning, rebottling or recovery — in that order. Recycling is the last option, not the default, and about 6% of intake ends up here.
- 02
Residue and heel management
Heels drained, measured and manifested. Hazmat to permitted disposal with documentation; everything else to our on-site treatment step.
- 03
Disassembly
Bottle separated from cage, valve and gaskets removed, base triaged. Mixed-material shredding destroys the value of all three streams, so nothing goes in whole.
- 04
Granulation and sorting
Bottle cut and granulated. Regrind sorted by colour and melt index — natural commands roughly 20% over mixed, which is why sorting pays for itself.
- 05
Steel shearing and baling
Cage sheared and baled to the density and dimension the mill specifies. Loose cages are worth substantially less per ton than baled ones.
- 06
Weigh, certify, ship
Certified scale ticket per stream, diversion certificate issued against the unit count, material shipped to its market.
Honest about the hierarchy
Recycling is third-best, and we say so
A lot of companies market recycling as the environmental win. It is not. It is what you do when the two better options have been exhausted.
1. Reuse as a container
Wash it and send it round again. Avoids the entire manufacturing burden of a replacement: about 126 kg CO₂e per unit. Our pool averages 7.4 turns per bottle.
2. Reuse as an object
Cut it into a trough, a planter or a rack. Skips the furnace entirely and keeps the material in physical service for another decade.
3. Recycle the material
Granulate and re-melt. Recovers the molecules but still pays the re-extrusion energy. Better than virgin by a wide margin; worse than reuse by a wider one.
This hierarchy is the reason our traders are instructed to exhaust reclaimed stock before quoting new, and the reason we buy totes other dealers reject. A granulator is an admission that the first two options failed — useful, necessary, and never the goal. See the full lifecycle
Questions
Recycling questions
What happens to a tote you cannot resell?
The bottle is drained, cut and granulated into regrind sorted by colour and melt index. The cage is sheared and baled to mill specification. The base is triaged: reused if sound, repaired if economic, scrapped by material if not. Since 2017 no unit entering our gate has had a path that ends in a landfill.
Do you pay for scrap totes?
Yes, by weight — roughly 115 lb of HDPE and 60 lb of galvanised steel per 275-gallon unit, priced against prevailing regrind and mill markets on the day of pickup. Scrap pricing moves weekly, so a quote from last month is a starting point rather than a number.
Can you handle totes with hazardous residue?
With a manifest, yes. The heel goes to permitted disposal with documentation, the container is washed on the appropriate line, and only then does it enter the recycling stream. We will not accept un-manifested hazmat, and we will not resell an unwashed hazmat-residue container at any price.
Do you sell regrind?
Yes, by the gaylord or the truckload. Natural and mixed-colour HDPE regrind sorted by melt index, with a material data sheet. Most of it goes to extruders making pipe, drainage products and non-food packaging.
Can I get documentation for my ESG report?
That is what the diversion certificate is for: unit counts, tonnage by material stream, our methodology and the coefficient sources. It is designed to survive an audit, not to be a logo on a slide.
Acceptance
What we can and cannot take into the recovery stream
Recycling has fewer restrictions than resale, but it is not unrestricted. These are the actual acceptance rules.
| Material | Accepted | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Composite IBC totes, any condition | Yes | Drained; prior contents identified or manifested |
| Bare HDPE bottles | Yes | Drained and cut or whole |
| Bare galvanised cages | Yes | Any condition including sheared |
| Steel and plastic pallet bases | Yes | Sorted on arrival |
| Hardwood bases | Yes | Chipped or reused; ISPM-15 irrelevant at end of life |
| Valves, lids and fittings | Yes | Separated from the bottle before granulating |
| Rigid poly tanks and drums | Case by case | Depends on resin and size; ask first |
| Units with hazmat residue | Yes, with a manifest | Heel to permitted disposal first |
| Units with unidentifiable residue | Yes | Routed to permitted disposal, not to regrind |
| Units still holding product | No | That is waste disposal; we are not permitted |
| Mixed non-IBC plastics | No | Contaminates the regrind stream |
The last row matters more than it looks. Our regrind commands a premium because it is single-resin, thick-walled and documented. One load of mixed consumer plastic in the stream removes that premium for everyone, which is why we are strict about it.
Regrind specification
What we sell on the other side
If you are a buyer of recycled HDPE rather than a seller of containers, this is what comes out of the granulator.
| Grade | Source | Typical use | Minimum order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural HDPE, consistent MFI | Single-filler batches of uncoloured bottles | Pigmented moulding, specified extrusion | Gaylord |
| Natural HDPE, mixed MFI | Mixed uncoloured intake | General moulding | Gaylord |
| Mixed colour, consistent MFI | Sorted coloured bottles | Drainage pipe, ducting | Gaylord |
| Mixed colour, mixed MFI | General intake | Pallet blocks, dark products, filler | Gaylord or truckload |
| Baled galvanised steel | Cages and steel bases | Electric-arc furnace feedstock | Truckload |
Short answer
- Material data sheet supplied with every regrind order
- Prior-contents history available for contamination-sensitive buyers
- Natural carries roughly a 20% premium over mixed colour
- Steel is baled to mill specification, not sold loose
From the Yard Journal
Longer pieces from the people who run the wash line, the test bay and the trading desk.
5 September 2024 · 4 min
What regrind buyers actually pay for
Colour and melt index, in that order. Sorting to that granularity cut our granulator payback from 4.5 years to 3.2, and nobody modelled it in advance.
Theo Marsh · Materials & reporting
Read19 October 2022 · 5 min
The day we bought a granulator and stopped pretending
Material recovery is marginal on a spreadsheet. We bought the equipment anyway, because outsourcing it meant we could not honestly say where the plastic went.
Theo Marsh · Materials & reporting
Read14 July 2022 · 7 min
The disposal invoice that started a company
A Garden City blender was paying $19,400 a year to bury containers that were not broken. Here is the arithmetic that turned that line item into a business.
Marcus Vreeland · Founder
Read
Next move
Before you call a scrapyard, send us the count.
A scrapyard shreds the whole unit mixed and pays you shred price. We separate three streams, pay for each, and tell you how many of those units could have been resold instead.