Founded in Costa Rica in 2018, CRDC is currently active in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Africa, Mexico, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Hong Kong. | | image party/shutterstock
CRDC Global is turning hard-to-recycle plastics into concrete additives in Pennsylvania and plans to expand nationwide as soon as possible.
The company brought its first US commercial-scale facility online in York, Pennsylvania, in mid-October. CRDC Chief Operating Officer Ross Gibby said in his Plastics Recycling Update that while the company has “pretty aggressive goals,” the plastic problem deserves such an end.
“We feel very fortunate to have a solution that can bring a benign end to plastic that is currently unrecyclable and ends up in landfills,” he said.
CRDC is plastic and turn them into A structural concrete additive called RESIN8 reduces weight, slows water absorption and improves thermal insulation.
building the base
CRDC was founded in Costa Rica in 2018 and currently operates in New Jersey, South Africa, Mexico, the UK, New Zealand and Hong Kong. The Pennsylvania facility is his second commercial-scale plant at CRDC, Gibby said, while he has three other facilities in Samoa, South Africa and Australia that will soon be operational. .
The company partnered with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste in 2021 to help scale its operations.and press release, Steve Shikla, Vice President and Head of Americas for the Group, said: “Plastic waste is a valuable resource that can be unlocked with the right technology and solutions. RESIN8 is one such solution.
“Since we started working with CRDC Global, they have made great strides to improve their processes and perfect new technologies,” added Sikra. “We are proud to travel with them to expand their technology around the world.”
Gibby said the CRDC is also focused on reducing transportation as much as possible, and would likely need about 75 plants to cover a “huge geographic area” of the United States. I’m assuming it’s high.
York, Pennsylvania was chosen as the first large-scale location due to its easy access to markets for both construction products and construction projects.
“We have a very accessible highway,” says Gibby. “One advantage he has is that York is broadly considered an industrial area, I think because of its location, so we knew the infrastructure would be there to support our needs. .”
The York facility is slightly smaller than the originally planned CRDC due to available building space. CRDC didn’t want to build a new structure, Gibby said, and the lead time to upgrade selected buildings with more power capacity was almost a year due to a slowdown in the supply chain.
The plant has a capacity of 1 tonne per hour and can produce about 20 tonnes per day. Initially, CRDC wanted him to produce 25-30 tons per day.
“We have decided to reduce our capacity to make the most of what we can do in this location and continue talking to the mayor about expansion,” he said.
The company already has several offtake deals for its additives with Fizzano Brothers Concrete Products and York Building Products, and is in talks with several other local and national companies, Gibby said. Stated.
Additionally, CRDC has partnered with Georgia-Pacific, which acts as a broker to obtain raw materials for the company, allowing CRDC to “focus more on converting and transforming plastics.”
Georgia-Pacific has strong ties with MRFs in the region, Gibby said. York was therefore a strong choice when the company was in the early stages of planning. Since then, however, the CRDC has found that mixed bales from MRF are often too rich in contaminants such as glass and metals to be usable.
“You can’t extract it at that point when it’s piled up with everything else,” he said.
Instead, the bulk of the York facility’s raw materials come from nearby industrial sources. Gibby said the CRDC is currently getting plastic for his cleanup event from as far away as Alaska, but “this is temporary because our goal is to plant plants everywhere.” It’s something,” he said.
This additive can be made of plastics 1-7 containing multi-layered polymers and is capable of treating some degree of organic pollution, such as beach sand, mucus from rivers, food from municipal waste streams, and paper labels. can, said Gibby.
A third stream of raw materials comes from CRDC’s “Bag that Builds” program. The program allows residents to submit plastic to the facility. Gibby said York residents responded enthusiastically to the program.
“We’re pleasantly surprised by the amount of engagement we’re getting from the community itself,” he said. “If we had gone to a bigger city, we wouldn’t necessarily have had as much impact on the community, and we wouldn’t have had as much commitment and enthusiasm and passion for what we do. prize.”
According to Gibby, the CRDC never actually promoted the bag program, but local Rotary clubs found out about it, joined in, and spread the message to other local groups and businesses.
Local businesses have decided to become collection points for the bags, and the mayor has set up three more collection points around the city. The school got involved and Gibby said people accepted it.
“It really took off,” Gibby said. “We have people who stop by all day and they don’t just want to drop off their bags, they want to talk and understand what we do with the material and how it works. Some still doubt that we can take everything we can put in our bags, but we are educating them.
aim to expand
Gibby’s goal is to expand across the United States and globally. The reason for this is “there is a lot of interest from island nations with limited landfill space, tourist destinations with large amounts of plastic washing up on their beaches and generating waste”.
CRDC is now cultivating national partners to help the company expand in the U.S. “as soon as possible.” Gibby said the company is currently developing strategic plans for its next location.
“To tell you the truth, I was stunned,” said Gibby. “I think it will be big. will be.”
