During the first nine months of this year, Direct Pack has used 25% more post-consumer recycled material in its BOTTLEBOX take-out containers and custom food packaging than during the same period last year. So far this year, we have saved 42.2 million pounds of PET plastic from landfills, which is means that we have helped save 57 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That is equivalent to taking 5,486 cars off the road for one year, or saving energy to power 4,506 households for a year!
A large contributor to this achievement is our own reclaiming and recycling facility, Direct Pack Recycling. In a full circle process, we receive bales of used PET bottles and packaging from different MRFs (Material Recovery Facilities) and scrub and clean and sort and flake it all into “new” raw material. We use all the internally produced recycled material in our own manufacturing facilities in North America. We are thrilled that the demand for post-consumer material in our packaging keeps growing, and we are soon opening our second recycling facility. With that, we will be able to more than double the internal production of recycled material.
We are grateful for all the support we are getting from both supplier and customer partners, as well as for our amazing team members who make all this happen, as we continue on our journey to become a fully circular packaging company.