The Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) announced the recipients of the 2013 Environmental Stewardship Awards. Presentations took place on March 21, 2013 during SPE's Global Plastics Environmental Conference (GPEC 2013) in New Orleans, LA, U.S.A. Reflecting the conference theme "The Latest Need to Know: From Recycling to Sustainability of Plastics," the awards recognize companies and institutions that have demonstrated environmental leadership and excellence through significant achievements.
The recipients of the 2013 GPEC Awards are:
- Hilex Poly Co. LLC (Hartsville, SC): Plastics Recycling Technologies and Applications Award for investing in a sustainable solution for plastic bags and films by creating and operating the largest closed loop recycling plant in its industry.
- MCS Industries, Inc. (Easton, PA): Plastics Recycling Technologies and Applications Award for converting often difficult to recycle, post-consumer scrap materials such as expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam packaging and large printer cartridges into designer picture frames.
- Interfacial Solutions (River Falls, WI): Plastics from Renewables Award for developing hyper-branching technology that effectively counteracts any foreseeable issues with molecular weight loss due to the hydrolytic degradation of polylactic acid (PLA) during melt processing. This permits, for the first time, the possibility of repeated melt processing without pre-drying.
- Avery Dennison (Pasadena, CA): Design for Sustainability Award for designing its Bottle-to-Bottle Portfolio for PET Recyclability as a solution to address the impact of labels on PET bottle recyclability. Its newly developed pressure sensitive adhesive label products can help brands adhere to design for recycling guidelines so that their PET bottles can be easily collected and do not contribute to contamination and yield loss of the RPET supply.
- Infiltrator Systems Inc. (Old Saybrook, CT): Chairman's Award for carrying out large scale recycling of waste plastics for innovative soil and water purification applications.
- Mondelez International, Inc. (Deerfield, IL): Daniel Eberhardt Environmental Stewardship Award for having cut packaging by 45,000,000 lb. (20,500 metric tons), increased sustainable sourcing of agricultural commodities by 36%, eliminated about 20 million kilometers of travel miles, cut energy by 3%, CO2 emissions by 6%, water use by 3% and manufacturing waste by 18%. The company is the world's largest chocolate, biscuit, candy and powdered beverage company and the second-largest in coffee and gum.
- General Motors (Detroit, MI): Daniel Eberhardt Environmental Stewardship Award for commitment to continuously reducing the environmental impact of its vehicles and facilities. Currently, the company recycles 90 percent of its global manufacturing waste and has 103 landfill-free facilities, with a goal to increase that number to 125 sites by 2020. This effort has also helped generate an estimated $1 billion in reuse and recycling revenue from its byproducts, and eliminate 10 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2011.
