Why do we have to pay PC Plastics to give them our foam?

A:   Location, location, location.   This modest fee helps offset cost we incur by doing business in the urban Portland area, rather than in cheaper sites outside of the metropolitan area, which are harder to reach.   The drop sites at Far West Fiber use the fees to help offset the cost of hauling the material to our plant, and the cost of maintaining our trailers.   If you drop your foam off at our plant, we use the drop fees to help offset the high cost of rent for our space in Portland.

  Why doesn't anyone else do this?

A:   There are a number of reasons:   The main deterrent to this system is also the reason we do what we do.   It concerns the cost of moving such bulky, lightweight material.   A 50- foot trailer can bring in only 1,200 lbs of foam material, whereas the same trailer can haul out 40,000 lbs of finished goods.   This means it takes roughly 35 trailer loads of foam material to make a single load of finished goods.   Therefore, every 50-foot tractor-trailer load of plastic pellets we put back into consumers households represents 35 times that amount of material that we saved from the landfill for a long time to come.  

Unlike most businesses, we don't have a one-stop shop for our raw materials.   We have to source them from a very large number of places, some post-consumer, and some post-industrial.   With the variety of materials we acquire, we have to create consistent products that meet strict individual customer specifications year in and year out.   To do this takes a number of experts in the various fields of logistics, machinery, manufacturing, plastics, and finance.   The run up is long, and the financial rewards are modest, but it provides a tremendous benefit to the community and to the environment.

  Why can't we throw our foam into our regular co-mingled recycling bins, and have it picked up curbside?

A:   Haulers and recyclers are paid by the pound, so traditional material recycling facilities (MRF's) do not get paid handsomely for removing lightweight materials from the waste stream.   Thus, there is no incentive for them to remove it.   Additionally, the "melt point" for plastic is low, around 350 F.   This means that contaminants don't get burned out, or otherwise purged in the melting process, like they do with steel or aluminum.   So the material is easily ruined when comingled with other materials.   Paper, tape, etc., all represent contamination for our products, and in fact, for most recyclable plastics.   They have to be cleaned off, in order for the plastic to run through our process.

 

  Why do I have to drive so far to drop my foam off?  

A:   We are always working on setting up additional drop sites, and would love to hear from you so we can get one near you.

  Where can we buy PC Plastics' products?

A:   PC Plastics is a "C2B" company.   Consumer-to-Business.   Our finished products are the raw materials for companies that make the products consumers buy in stores.   You can certainly let your voice be heard though, and buy products labeled "Made with recycled materials;" and if we have our way, your new computer printer will be made out of the packaging material that came with that TV that you bought yourself for Christmas.

  Who else recycles foam?

A:   PC Plastics is the only post-consumer foam recycler in the Pacific Northwest.   Other recyclers take it, but because they are not manufacturers, they simply bale it and send it overseas companies where cheap labor is used to pick it clean.   Then they put it through the same process we at PC Plastics do.   Ironically, PC Plastics has to pay more than these overseas companies in order to keep it in the local community.   But to us, it represents a re-usable resource that is right under our noses.   The alternative is to keep extracting this resource from oil, which we find unsavory, given the solution offered by PC Plastics.

  Who are PC Plastics' competitors?

A:   Producers of plastic pellets, like BASF, Dow Chemical, and other corporate behemoths, which create what we refer to as "virgin" material from petroleum and agricultural products.   Also, other plastics recyclers.

  What is "virgin" material made from?

A:   It is generally a petroleum-based product, meaning it is formulated from a crude oil base.   There are a growing number of agricultural-based plastics in the marketplace now, and we are working on processes for recycling those too.

  How do you compete with virgin material?

A:   Many of our higher-end products perform as well as virgin material.   This is borne out by our UL certifications which we have worked hard to achieve on several of our products.   The UL certification provides a universally-recognized, third-party verification of the quality and consistency of our product, giving a level of comfort to large consumer product manufacturers.   In addition to performing as well as virgin product, we sell it for considerably less than virgin, so there is a strong business case for using our recycled products instead of the more expensive virgin variety.

  How does PC Plastics compete with other recycled products?

A:   Our products are process-controlled, which means we make them to our customers' strict specifications.   Each shipment is made-to-order, and we formulate different products to meet each customer's specific need.   Our expertise in plastics manufacturing and molding sets us apart from the average "recyclers," who simply collect, shred, and extrude, but are not interested in penetrating the consumer markets, which require a higher degree of manufacturing know-how and process control.   The UL Certifications we have achieved are not the focus of our competitors, because there is ample business available in high-volume, low price recycled plastic, and of course, in the export markets.