It’s a long and difficult journey to take a plastic bottle from used to reusable. From January to Aug. 31 of this year, 8.3 tons of plastics collected at ETSU made the multi-stage trip past the landfill for a chance to become something new.

Although it may not be a top contender in recycling totals because of its light weight, plastic takes up a lot of space in landfills and consumers generate large amounts of it, said Johnson City Solid Waste Manager John Smith.

Bottles are the main source of ETSU’s plastic waste. In April of last year, about 15,000 bottles were bought from 70 drink machines on campus, said Auxiliary Services Director Jennifer Crigger.

Some of the bottles sold each month may take the short trip to Iris Glen Environmental Center on East Main Street. Others may be tossed into one of the 200 recycling bins scattered around campus. What happens next?

When bins are full, one of 10 student workers loads the plastics into ETSU’s white electric vehicle, said Kathleen Moore, who oversees recycling at the university. They haul the bottles to the recycling center in the corner of the parking lot between the Physical Plant and the Center for Physical Activity.

There, the plastics are dumped on a sorting table and divided into No. 1 and No. 2 plastics.

Water and soft drink bottles are often labeled No. 1 because they are made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PETE plastic. The No. 2s, such as milk jugs and juice bottles, are made from high density-polyethylene, a stiffer material called HDPE.

The plastics must be separated because their melting points are different.

“If you have two different types of plastic material in there, one of them is not going to melt at the prescribed temperature,” said Dallas Bernard, plant manager at Tri-City Waste Paper in Kingsport. “It’s either going to melt too quick and burn or it’s not going to melt and stop up the process.”

A compacter bought with green fee funds squeezes the separated plastics into blocks weighing about 120 pounds, Moore said.

Every month or so, the bales are taken to Johnson City’s recycling warehouse on New Street. By giving the plastics to Johnson City, ETSU is giving up possible revenues. “We aren’t interested in making money,” Moore said. “We’re just interested in spreading the word about recycling and diverting stuff from the landfill.”

After combining ETSU’s baled bottles with plastics from Johnson City’s five convenient sites, it’s taken to Tri-City Waste Paper, said Danny Greene, the field operations supervisor for Johnson City Solid Waste. There, the company weighs and buys the plastics from Johnson City for about 3 cents a pound, Smith said.

Tri-City Waste Paper acts as a “middleman” between recyclables collectors and manufactures. They make a profit from buying and processing No. 1 and 2 plastics and then selling them to other companies.

The “middleman’s” first task, sorting, is most often the most difficult.

“The biggest problem is on a soda bottle, Bernard said. “The lid is the same material as the bottle, but if you look inside there is a silicone seal in there. That seal is what messes everything up because plastics are melted down, not made into pulp.”

The caps aren’t recyclable because silicone and PET plastic melt at different temperatures. Since there isn’t enough workers to remove lids, Tri-City Waste Paper asks customers to take them off, even if they don’t have the silicone seal.

“If the lid’s on it and it’s screwed on tight,” Bernard said, “when we try to bale those things, you wouldn’t believe the pressure it takes to bust one of those bottles.”

About 20 to 30 tons of plastics brought to Tri-City Waste Paper each month end up in the landfill, Bernard said.

“A lot of the children’s toys, we get those things in constantly,” Bernard said, “the little cars, playhouses and stuff like that. They have metal parts in them or are two types of plastic mixed together and you just can’t do anything with them. It’s not feasible to spend the labor to break them down and recycle them.”

About 80 tons make it through the sorting process each month and are sold for 12 to 13 cents a pound, Bernard said.

One of the buyers is Mohawk Industries in Calhoun, Ga., where plastics are made into carpet fibers.

Another is United Resource Recovery Corp. in Spartanburg, S.C. Backed by the Coca-Cola Co., United Resource makes new plastic bottles and food packaging containers out of No. 1 plastics.

Tri-City Waste Paper also sells plastics to China.

Although there are several plastic buyers, their pockets aren’t as deep as they used to be.

“The markets for recyclables, just like the economy, they’ve gone in the tank the last year,” Smith said. “In summer 2008, we were getting 10 cents a pound for it [plastic], then it went down to nothing this year. Probably six months ago, we were lucky to give it away.

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