Waste 'sandwich' helps Wal-Mart recycle

More than 300 Wal-Mart stores in the West are recycling shopping and apparel bags, thanks to a special ‘sandwich’ bale.

Beach-ball bins have proven to be the perfect place to collect plastic bags in the backroom.
Beach-ball bins have proven to be the perfect place to collect plastic bags in the backroom.

Bales combining corrugated and plastic bags are now being created and ultimately recycled from 326 Wal-Mart stores in eleven Western states. Developed by Rocky Mountain Recycling, the patent-pending process is in a pilot test that began last fall.

In just the second month of the test, the stores generated 448 tons of recovered plastic, says Tara Stewart, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. Projected out for a year, the total would reach well over 5ꯠ tons.

“It may total even more because the volumes are increasing as our stores become more experienced with making the ‘sandwich’ bales,” Stewart says. Previously, all this material had been directed to landfills as waste, she confirms.

The program has been dependent on two factors: the “sandwich” developer, Jeff Ashby, and Wal-Mart’s famous 4’-x-4’-x-10’-high wire or plastic tubed in-store displays to merchandise beach balls!

Jeff, the son of proud dad, Arnold Ashby of container distributor Industrial Container & Supply Co. in Salt Lake City, has been involved in recycling for about 15 years, including a stint driving a truck that picked up bales of corrugated from retailers like Wal-Mart. His relationship with the retail behemoth dates back to the early ’90s, he tells Packaging World.

What’s so significant about the beach-ball bin? It’s the way the stores can easily collect plastic bags in their backrooms before the new bales are made. In the end, store employees use the corrugated baler in the store to make the combination sandwich that uses 10” to 12” of corrugated box waste as the base and about the same amount as the top of the sandwich. In between, workers load the plastic bags and activate the baler as many as 15 strokes, each time adding more plastic bags. When the bale is completed, the baler secures it with strapping.

The result is nice, flat corrugated top and bottom with a center of 18” of compressed plastic bags and stretch wrap film. The flat surfaces are important so that bales can be stacked for removal and shipping.

Garment bags were the driver

The impetus for this program wasn’t the Wal-Mart shopping bag, even though that’s at the heart of a school collection program that later became part of the program.

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