The state’s largest recycler, rePlanet, based in Corona California, has hundreds of retail collection locations around the state. Now the company will use those tons of plastic PET bottles to make those familiar clamshell containers for the ag industry. They will do this in Visalia having just started production this month at their new location on on Goshen Ave.
The company leased the former Stanley Bostitch staple plant at 6941 W Goshen Ave in January that had sat empty for some time.
“We are up to 25 employees this month and should be around 100 in 7 months” says plant manager John Collins. Collins is a local who worked for Reynolds in Visalia and Peninsula Packaging in Exeter.
“ We picked Visalia not just because of the location near farmers in the San Joaquin Valley but because of the work ethic here.” He adds that the City of Visalia has been cooperative with the retooling of the plant.
The new manufacturing plant is called RePlanet Packaging, a division of RePlanet Recycling, a $200 million company. “We’ve got over 500 locations where people drop off their recyclables ” says Collins. Now those recyclables will get a second chance or more.
The end product, clear clamshells have taken off in the fruit distribution business where the protect fragile fruit and veggies in the shipping and display of produce. You can spot them in the supermarket like those that used to sell blueberries.The clamshells are recyclable and are typically cleaned and reused.
PET bottles enjoy a good recycling record in California looking to help stop water bottle waste on our roadsides and sea shores as well as save space in our landfills.
While the state seeks a 75% recycling goal for all products, the California Redemption Value (CRV) program provides cash incentives for recycling helping to push some 86 percent of all beverage containers to be successfully recycled in 2013, according to CalRecycle.
Still,in 2013, 30.2 million tons of material were landfilled and 0.86 tons of waste were incinerated at the three transformation facilities in California.
The state 2013 CalRecycle report says “ Californians generate solid waste at their homes and workplaces every day. Currently, about half of this material is source-reduced, recycled, or composted, and half is disposed at landfills (buried), disposed at transformation facilities (burned to produce energy), or handled in another disposal-related activity. While almost all of this material could and should be source-reduced, recycled, or composted, it is likely there will always be some remaining material that needs to be disposed or managed by alternative methods. In the 25 years since people became concerned about landfill capacity in the late 1980s, the management of solid waste has changed tremendously, with much more emphasis on saving resources and reducing disposal. The solid waste collection, handling, and disposal infrastructure has also evolved. From initial generation to final disposition, California still has about 37 million tons of material that goes to disposal, or activities closely related to disposal, each year. That is nearly 1 ton (2,000 pounds) of solid waste for every resident every year.”
RePlanet retail drop off points in Visalia are at 1300 W Walnut Ave
and 737 S. Lovers Lane.