CarbonLite has started operation at its standalone bottle-to-bottle recycling facility in Pennsylvania. The company claims that the facility is the largest recycled PET (rPET) production base in the world. It is able to produce up to 90 million pounds/year (40,823 tons/year) of food-grade rPET pellets, that according to CarbonLite, sufficient to manufacture 2.5 billion rPET bottles a year.
The facility will supply CarbonLite’s customers, including Nestlé Waters North America, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and Keurig Dr. Pepper. CarbonLite said that the new facility would help these customers to reduce their carbon emissions by 60,000 tons/year. The company runs similar rPET facilities in Dallas, Texas, and Riverside, California. It plans to build a fourth rPET plant in Orlando, Florida.
CarbonLite also recycles ocean-bound PET packaging waste collected near waterways that are at risk of ending up in the ocean. CarbonLite said its existing facilities could process over 7 billion post-consumer plastics bottles annually. CarbonLite also has a packaging subsidiary called PinnPack, which focuses on producing food packaging made from recycled plastics.
