With virgin resin so expensive, there’s plenty of recycling action—from PET bottle-to-bottle plants to new projects aimed at agricultural film, carpets, and auto-shredder residue.

NPE was full of new equipment and systems for recapturing valuable in-plant scrap and post-consumer/post-industrial plastic waste. Recovery of PET packaging and film or fiber waste were particular areas of emphasis, as were lots of new granulators, from the world’s biggest to micro-size and even ‘clean-room’ models.

Recycling and reclamation are once again hot technologies—this time because of high resin prices.

There are lots of ways to economize on resin costs, but here are four that you may have overlooked: negotiating smarter resin contracts, buying “futures,” using recycled resins, and more efficient purging aids. The main idea is to give yourself more choices, no matter what direction resin prices go.

Topping recycling news at the latest giant K Show in Dusseldorf, Germany, were new compactor technologies for films and foams that can densify plastic waste for recycling and even mold finished parts—not just save space in a landfill.