Plastic bottles are given new lease on life by Envirothene Holdings recycling plant.

Plastic bottles are given new lease on life by Envirothene Holdings recycling plant

Hoping to take advantage of heightened consumer awareness and a state mandate to cut landfill volume in half by the year 2000, Envirothene Holdings Inc. started operating a plastic bottle recycling plant last week in Chino.

Environthene Holdings, based in Beverly Hills, will buy plastic bottles, recycle them into plastic pellets at its Chino recycling plant, and sell them to plastics manufacturers to be used in plastic bottles and films.

The 33,000-square-foot Chino plant will have capacity to handle 15 million pounds annually of high-density polyethylene - commonly used for milk, shampoo and detergent bottles and other plastic containers.

The plant will expand to a 50-million-pound capacity by 1993, with the ability to process plastic bags and other polyethylene products.

At that level, the plant would be recycling roughly 6.5 percent of the 1991 recyclable bottle plastic in the state.

"We are only going after a small part of the market," said Envirothene President Jason Stanton. "There will be competition. Our niche is by being first."

He said he expects demand for the plastic pellets to exceed supply for several years.

Envirothene will buy the plastic bottles from municipal curbside programs, buy-back centers, waste haulers, transfer stations and other recycling collection centers.

Two developments have spurred the creation of the plant, Stanton said: improved technology to clean and remove contaminants for used plastics, and greater public interest in recycling and state mandates for recycling such as 1989 Assembly Bill 939, which calls for a 50 percent reduction in landfill volume by the year 2000.

Local plastic manufacturers will benefit from recycling because it will reduce transportation charges for the material, Stanton said.

The reprocessing system consists of grinding whole bottles into flakes, washing and drying the flakes, then melting them to the consistency of taffy. It is then cooled and cut into pellets, which are boxed and distributed.

The Chino recycling plant will complement Envirothene's Azusa plastic grocery bag manufacturing plant, Plasco Press, which will use some 15 percent of the Chino output.

Envirothene was incorporated in October 1990 by Chairman Edward Gerbard and Chief Executive Michael Kopulsky.

Stanton pointed out that the Chino plant, which cost between $2 million and $3 million to build, is also environmentally sound, reusing 95 percent of the water used in the recycling process and producing no hazardous wastes as byproducts.