Consumer Corner: Fla. firm recycling resins to make housewares greener

Sunday, April 3, 2011 4:01 AM By dwi

CHICAGO, April 3 (UPI) -- Don't countenance today but that newborn impressible structure in the cupboard may not be adding to lubricator consumption and may hit kept a clump of clog out of a landfill.

More and more housewares manufacturers are getting fascinated in sustainability and are tapping Nextlife, the Florida consort that takes manufacturers finished the impact of converting from virgin resins to recycled resins, to take heaps of impressible hangars, shopping bags and strapping materials out of the waste cycle.

Spokeswoman Catherine del Spina said Nextlife takes manufacturers finished the organisation process, partnering with the International Housewares Association to help attain the playing greener -- and she says interest is ontogeny among the nation's largest companies.

"There's a hotline acquirable on the IHA Web site. They crapper call and speak to our green guru," said del Spina, who comes from a organisation background with the Pottery Barn. "We were positioned at this year's housewares exhibit in the Going Green booth. We had Fortune 50 companies coming into the booth and locution they're not sure most how to go most converting. A hotel came in. Their guests are asking for it."

Del Spina noted exclusive most 10 proportionality of every the impressible produced is being recycled. Nextlife takes post-industrial plastics -- not the clog consumers are throwing into reuse bins -- including polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene, breaking them downbound into bisphenol A-free resins that crapper then be reused, processing 90 meg heaps yearly at its plant in Frankfort, Ky. The consort has plans to unstoppered a second plant later this year.

"Any creation prefabricated of virgin resin crapper be prefabricated from Nextlife resin -- collanders, selection boards, impressible cups," she said, adding the Food and Drug Administration has authorised the resins for food-safe products.

Though the consort module not detail the specifics of its process, a spokesman said a "combination of mechanical, chemical and human change activities" are involved. The impact took threesome eld to amend and is continuously being tweaked.

Nextlife itself was formed most 2 1/2 eld past and compounded with Mountain Valley, a recycling consort that has been around for more than quaternary eld that definite to ready the Nextlife moniker when it took over late terminal year.

Using recycled resins is actually cheaper for manufacturers but that's not Nextlife's goal.

"We don't delude supported on cost," del Spina said. "It starts and stops with sustainability. Our content is not to do playing with grouping who just poverty to acquire supported on price. On a normal day, our resin might be 10 proportionality less. Now it's considerably inferior (with the toll of lubricator skyrocketing). Price is not the issue. The material is a step to sustainability.

"When given the opportunity to attain a choice and every things are equal, consumers are definitely voting to acquire the green product. But the green creation has to deliver. Historically, they hit not delivered so well. But the designs hit embellish fantastic. It's changing very quickly."

Del Spina said walking the aisles of terminal month's housewares change exhibit in Chicago, she saw "pockets of sustainability" but manufacturers are not yet pushing it as a marketing tool. Soon, she said, that every module change.

Nextlife's advise materials feature the company's recycling activeness yearly saves some 550,000 barrels of oil, 360 meg kilowatt hours of electricity, greenhouse pedal emissions equal to 25,000 cars and the energy equivalent of 28 meg gallons of gasoline.

The recycled resins crapper be integrated with virgin resins or utilised on their own to attain injection molded products.


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