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My closing statement read: "There is only one real effective and incentive method to encourage environmentally sound collecting of beverage one-way containers and it is deposit in combination with High-Tech R&D resulted Reverse Vending Machines!

California Agency Awards $20 Million in Grant Money to Improve Environment

The California Department of Conservation is awarding $20 million to companies throughout the state to help boost recycling levels in the state. The money comes from unclaimed California Refund Value on beverage containers that are not recycled.

Many of the recipients also provided matching contributions, indicating significant commitment to the project’s success. In total, matching funds totaled more than $72 million.

Selection of this year’s grant recipients was based on a number of factors, including:

• The project’s potential to create new temporary or permanent jobs
• Innovation and sustainability in material collection and/or processing improvements
• Demonstration of new technologies
• Creation of new products using recycled beverage containers
• Overcoming barriers to the purchase of recycled-content products

Grant recipients include the following:

Peninsula Plastics Recycling, Inc. -- Awarded $4.9 million toward a $27 million project to establish a plastics manufacturing facility in Stanislaus County. The facility will provide a California-based supply of food and beverage packaging made from recycled plastic. The project is expected to recover more than 880 million plastic containers a year. (The company recently inked a deal with ECO2 Plastics. To read more on that deal click here: Peninsula/ECO2)

CR&R Inc. -- Receiving $730,000 to begin development of a $26 million, three-year project to create one of the most environmentally advanced materials recovery facilities in the United States. The grant funds will help purchase an optical scanner, overhead magnet and other equipment to capture a higher volume of CRV material. The 52-acre facility will be one of the first in the United States to develop bio-methane for energy use from sorted municipal waste. It is estimated the project will process 80 million beverage containers annually.

Davis Street Station -- Granted $744,419, with matched funds of $471,023. The project will purchase and install an optical sorting system to capture plastic and aluminum found in the mixed paper stream. The project increases recovery of plastic CRV containers by 15 percent, or 106 tons per year, and increases aluminum can recovery by 15 percent, or 78 tons per year.

Ecointesys-Life Cycle Systems -- Granted $72,000. The project will develop a tool for DOC and others to use in assessing potential waste-to-energy and other technologies to be used as a component of California’s beverage container recycling strategy. The tool will be based on a comprehensive lifecycle assessment of alternative beverage container end-of-life options and energy production options.

Business for the Environment, dba Future 500 -- Granted $1,047,500 with matching funds of $953,300. This project will develop and test a practical business system for sorting materials from mixed recyclables and plastics. It seeks to address both the sustainability of packaging materials in terms of natural resources used, carbon mitigation achieved, and the systems for recycling and re-use of these materials.

National Association for PET Containers -- Granted $295,000, with matching funds of  $67,165 -- The project will provide the research and outreach to establish an independent test laboratory at a college or university in California. The test laboratory will conduct assessments of recycling streams and will become an essential marketing tool for any beverage maker introducing a new CRV package into the California marketplace.

PRCC -- Granted $537,000 with matching funds of $562,500. The project will purchase and install an additional high compression plastic reduction system at buy-back locations throughout California. The system crushes and compacts the plastic containers, thereby improving the economics, quantity and quality of CRV containers.

Valley Vista Services -- Granted $545,000 with matching funds of $2,014,492. The project will increase the rate and quality of CRV recovery by establishing processing and sorting lines in Southern California plants that process and separate clean CRV from commercial waste in various cities.

R3 Consulting Group, Inc. --  Granted $300,000 to perform a feasibility study for transition to a beverage system that includes more refillable bottles in the mix of beverage containers in California. The study will outline the changes that would be required in current law, collection and processing, infrastructure and manufacturing in order to support the use of more refillables in the state.

EPIC Plastics -- Granted $774,800 with matching funds of $224,500: The project will expand and update Epic Plastics’ raw materials processing capabilities through advanced technological machinery. This will permit Epic to solidify a partnership with an outside plastic pipe manufacturer to supply the manufacturer with recycled post consumer plastic bottles and consolidate the sales and deliveries.

Other recipients include the following:

California State University, Chico, Office of Research; Butte County; Granted $270,740 -- Will collaborate with Zanker Materials Processing Facility to determine the quantities of beverage containers disposed of in mixed construction and demolition debris. It will develop and document a new processing and sorting method, increase the recovery of beverage containers not currently recycled.

Owens Brockway Glass Container, Inc. granted $1,103,501, matching funds for $615,055. The project will develop a specialized mini-cullet plant in Tracy to produce higher quality glass cullet feedstock for glass bottle manufacturing and purchase equipment to include screening, ceramic and metal detection, and color sorting.

Waste Connections. Granted $775,800; Matched Funding: $775,800 -- The project will install two paper sorting machines and a new system specifically designed to recover a higher percent of CRV beverage containers by material type. This will result in increased recovery of CRV and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. Project is estimated to create eight new jobs annually.

eCullet, Inc. Granted $980,000; Matched Funding: $ 1,300,000 -- The project will develop, manufacture and commission a compact pre-processing and sorter system for glass. The "Distributed Recycling of Glass Cullet" system will process the output of residue collected from a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) to produce furnace-ready cullet for sale to bottle companies in California. The system could be portable or a fixed installation co-located at a MRF.

OMNI Resource Recovery. Granted $990,000; Matched Funding: $300,000 -- The project will add a sink/float system to the production line that will allow OMNI to make use of approximately 4.5 million pounds of CRV material that are currently too contaminated to be used.

TOMRA Pacific. Granted $1,400,000; Matched Funding: $2,900,000 -- The project will purchase equipment and construct a new glass processing facility in Commerce. The facility will allow TOMRA, the leading operator of CRV buyback centers in California, to process bottle glass for use in the production of new glass containers. The project will integrate TOMRA’s glass collection and processing activities

Vetrazzo, LLC. Granted $1,396,000; Matched Funding: $7,421,000 -- This project will add cleaning equipment to reduce contamination and improve cleanliness of raw glass material. It will also produce countertop samples.