Through the program, commercial municipal recycling facilities (MRFs) in different locations would separate bottles into bales. NatureWorks will buy the bales and route them to “an appropriate end-of-life solution and/or post-consumer use based on geography of collection and prevailing market economics,” said a company press release.
NatureWorks says PLA can now be sorted from other plastics using standard Near-Infrared (NIR) equipment. In the future, the company said “MRFs will sort PLA from curbside collection into a pure stream that can be mechanically or chemically recycled back to its monomer through hydrolysis. Third-party independent research verifies that NatureWorks PLA has minimal impact in the current recycling infrastructure for recycling PET and HDPE,” said the release.
