Chicago area facility creates plastic from 100% recycled materials
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Wednesday is National Recycling Day, and in northwest suburban Itasca, one manufacturing plant is at the forefront of creating some of the most responsible plastic packaging for your favorite products.
At the Amcor Rigid Packaging manufacturing facility, recycled plastic is given new life, but before it can start on this journey, it's likely sitting in your refrigerator right now.
"You start with the Hellman's. You get this at home. When you're done with it, you want to rinse it out. You don't have to, but best practice is to rinse it out. Put the cap back on, throw it into the recycle bin," said Amcor general manager Carmen Becker.
At the Amcor recycling facility, they create plastics from 100% recycled materials. It starts by melting recycled plastic down into pellets.
"These pellets are going to be sent to our facility where we inject it into a preform," Becker said.
Recycled plastic goes through quite the journey at the Amcor manufacturing facility in Itasca. It starts out as preforms, and it actually makes its way all the way through a conveyor belt to become a finished product in just five minutes.
Becker said two-thirds of plastic they use in the facility is from recycled plastic. They churn out about 700 million bottles a year – about 2 million a day.
"The impact obviously is if you recycle there's less waste. You want less waste. It's good for the planet," Becker said.
But manufacturing facilities like Amcor's can only keep churning out recycled plastic if people recycle.
"We can't make these packages without recycled products, and I think if you look at the statistics for North America, we have 29% on average of PET. In Illinois, it's only 11%. So we want to do a little more here if possible," Becker said.
Amcor believes it is possible. Their goal is to have everything they produce be 100% recyclable or reusable by 2025.
