EPS Recycling

A company has joined forces with the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers and increased its recycling efforts to include expanded polystyrene. ACH Foam Technologies (Denver) provides EPS packaging for the transportation of healthcare products, specifically pharmaceutical companies. Among the larger companies it provides packaging and recycling services for is ViraCor Laboratories.

 

“Basically the program is geared toward pharmaceutical or any temperature-sensitive customers who utilize EPS shipping containers,” says Keith Baechle, western regional manager for ACH. “Because EPS is recyclable, we encourage these customers to promote themselves as a collection center for their customers.”

 

Customers receive materials back, then store them for ACH to pick up when new product arrives. The company then transports the EPS back to its facility to recycle in one of two ways: grinding old material down and introducing it back into virgin block products to use for insulation or construction products, or densifying the ground material for ACH’s raw material supplier to remanufacture into raw goods.

 

Training is provided for customers that want to join in. ACH discusses material types and qualities that are suitable.

 

“First, it has to be EPS,” Baechle says. Materials out there look similar, he adds, and they will contaminate the system if introduced, so customers are trained on what materials are recyclable or not.

 

“We have a secondary inspection process which ensures noncontamination as well at our facility level,” Baechle continues. The materials need be free from labels, debris, dirt, or any foreign material. “For obvious reasons, we want the material to be ready for recycle as much as possible by the time it reaches our facility.”

 

A green sensibility lies at the core of the program, sometimes regardless of the original material’s source. ACH tries to accommodate other companies’ EPS product as well as its own, and Baechle ventures that the company collects as much product from other suppliers as its own. The primary goal is to serve its customers.

 

“Different customers have different needs and participate on different levels of EPS recycling. ACH tries to accommodate each customer’s needs to the fullest extent possible to recycle EPS product, whether it was or is purchased from us or not.”