A 23-year-old Dutch plastic recycling firm, Plastic Herverwerking Brabant (PHB) BV has become the first supplier in the world of a complete commercial altered-density-media system tailored to separate the plastics in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Since last October, PHB has operated a WEEE recycling system sized for 33 million lb/yr and averages about 4400 lb/hr of reclaimed material from 11,000 lb/hr of waste input.

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.

Two recently developed technologies are said to make high-quality PET recycling more economical.