Boise, Idaho, Assesses Hefty EnergyBag Program

The city of Boise, Idaho, announced that because of facility upgrades and delays, Salt Lake City-based Renewlogy will not be able to process plastics from the city’s Hefty EnergyBag program until later on this summer or early fall.

The hard-to-recycle plastics sent in the orange EnergyBags to Renewlogy were converted into an energy resource. Program administrators have searched for alternative markets to send the plastics; the most promising alternative was cement manufacturing facilities, Idaho Press reports. In the meantime, according to the report, a lifecycle analysis will be completed determining the environmental implications of using plastic as fuel in cement production.

In January 2018, the city of Boise was awarded a $50,000 grant from Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastic and Keep America Beautiful to establish the Hefty EnergyBag grant program in its communities, expand its recycling efforts and find a new home for materials no longer accepted by China.

Idaho Press has more:

The City of Boise announced last week that, due to delays, Renewlogy in Salt Lake City will not be expected to process plastics from the City’s Hefty EnergyBag program until late summer or early fall. Since mid-2019, Renewlogy has been upgrading its facility, but had plans to reopen in January. However, due to delays in equipment upgrades, the orange bags will continue to be stored at Western Recycling in Boise. Renewlogy did not return a request for comment.

“From the initial recycling changes we saw from China, I think cities across the country scrambled on what to do with their plastics, a lot of them elected to just landfill them. We worked really hard in a short time period to spin up something that we thought would be a good alternative. We fully anticipated that there would be bumps along the way,” said Public Works Communications Manager Colin Hickman.

Read the full article here.