In 2022, Ocean County’s Northern Recycling Center marketed almost 82,000 pounds of polypropylene, which workers had pulled manually at its single-stream facility.
“That material was primarily iced tea bottles, because they were the easiest to recognize,” said John Stanton, director of business development. “We had a very low yield.”
Ocean County is the second-largest county in New Jersey – the state that pioneered recycling in 1987 with the country’s first statewide mandate. Polypropylene started to be accepted in 2021.
Prior to receiving support from The Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene Coalition, the MRF was paying to send polypropylene to landfill. Staff at the county-owned MRF knew they could do more. Today they sell polypropylene to multiple domestic buyers and have done much more than they thought possible.
With support from the Coalition, they installed an optical sorter. In the second half of 2023, Ocean County reported capturing over 850,000 pounds of polypropylene. The sorter’s ability to recognize and divert polypropylene from landfill means the county now routinely collects more in one month than it did in an entire year.
New Jersey’s Recycled Content Law, which went into effect in January 2024, calls for increased recycled content in plastic packaging, which helps strengthen markets for post-consumer recycled polypropylene and other plastics. The county anticipates being able to collect between 2.2 to 4.4 million pounds of polypropylene each year.
“Not only are you getting paid for the material, but you’re also saving on the landfill costs,” Stanton said. “This is a wonderful win for the county.”