Small baler helps small waste generators achieve flexible plastic recycling

The new compact baler network fills a critical gap in the flexible plastic recycling sector, making waste collection economically viable for small and medium-sized commercial waste generators nationwide.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste has partnered with Generated Materials Recovery to deploy compact balers for low-volume commercial sites and provide flexible door-to-door collection services.

A pilot project has confirmed that thousands of commercial and industrial sites that were previously unable to participate in flexible plastic recycling can now do so economically and efficiently. This solution relies on small-scale compaction and baling equipment and an innovative logistics model, without requiring large-scale infrastructure investment.

The End Plastic Waste Alliance, through its Flexible Plastic Special Project, has partnered with the Global Materials Recovery (GMR) and its "RME Defeats Waste" initiative to deploy small balers in hospitals, warehouses, sports venues, and manufacturing facilities. These locations generate flexible plastic film waste, but the volume is insufficient to support traditional recycling pickup services. Initial pilot data shows that within just a few months, 8.8 metric tons of waste have been diverted from nine pilot sites, preventing it from entering landfills. Currently, 10 balers have been deployed, and multiple sites are gradually scaling up their operations.

Pranav Goenka, Chief Advisor for Global Project Development at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, said that this set of projects addresses long-standing systemic flaws in recycling infrastructure, flaws that have for decades caused large volumes of high-quality recyclable materials to be sent to landfills.

“Flexible plastic recycling has long been a major challenge, especially in commercial and industrial settings such as hospitals, food processing plants, warehouses, gymnasiums, and logistics parks,” Goenka explained. “These places generate flexible plastic waste every day, but the volume does not meet the service thresholds of traditional recycling collection systems. As a result, large amounts of recyclable material ultimately end up in landfills.”

Economic Challenges of Small-Scale Collection and Transportation

Based on past experience, a monthly plastic waste output of about 2,000 pounds is the threshold at which recycling operations become economically viable, yet at many sites the volume of flexible plastic film alone falls far short of that level. “Sites that generate less than 2,000 pounds of all types of plastic waste per month typically have no viable recycling options,” Goenka noted. “But if the waste from all such sites were aggregated, the total amount of recyclable flexible plastic would be considerable, creating a major supply gap in the recycling system.”

The small baler model reshapes the economic model from the two major cost drivers of warehousing and transportation. On-site baling equipment can compress loose, lightweight plastic film into dense bales, each weighing about 200 pounds, significantly reducing the storage space required for materials awaiting collection and transport. At the same time, recycling companies use flexible collection routes and deploy small vehicles to efficiently serve multiple low-volume sites through a less-than-truckload transportation model.

“The RME waste management program uses a fixed monthly subscription model, with services including baling equipment, regular pickup and transport, rebates, and sustainability data reporting,” Goenka said. “The monthly service fee starts at about $500.” This subscription model eliminates cost uncertainty—one major reason flexible film recycling has been difficult to scale in the past is that the cost of fragmented collection and transport can spike unpredictably.

Material Quality and Contamination Control

This project primarily recovers low-density polyethylene films from partner sites, including shrink film, stretch film, and packaging film. The recovered materials come from commercial and industrial facilities rather than residential household waste, and their quality is generally much higher than that of waste collected through community curbside recycling programs.

“Compared with ordinary household recyclables, these feedstocks have more consistent composition and fewer impurities,” Goenka said. “However, material quality still varies by site type: films generated by warehouses and retailers are more uniform in composition, while waste from stadiums and medical facilities is more mixed and more difficult to process.”

The on-site baling process itself also helps with quality control by preventing flexible plastics from being mixed with other waste. Goenka added: “Collecting and baling materials on-site where they are generated prevents flexible plastics from being mixed with other waste, effectively reducing the proportion of impurities and increasing the success rate of recycling.”

Material quality directly impacts downstream market prices. Most of the films produced in warehouses and retail stores are transparent with few printed patterns, classified as Grade A bundles, which have lower processing difficulty and higher market prices. The mixed waste produced by sports venues, packaging companies, and medical institutions falls under Grade B bundles, which have higher processing costs but still possess recycling value.

Technology empowers full transparency.

One of the key features of this project is the well-developed material tracking system, which allows partner companies to clearly understand the final destination of the recycled materials—something that traditional recycling models find difficult to achieve. Gohanka stated, "In traditional recycling models, once materials leave the company premises, information tracking becomes very limited. Most businesses only know that the materials have been collected but cannot obtain detailed information such as collection weight, transportation records, processing locations, and final uses."

RME Defeats Waste weighs each bale of packaged material and applies a barcode label, creating a complete traceability chain from the waste generation site to material consolidation and final processing. The baled materials are first transported to nearby recycling stations for aggregation, and once a full truckload is assembled, they are shipped to downstream end markets, including plastic compounding companies and finished-product manufacturers.

“Each partner company can log in to the sustainability data dashboard to clearly view environmental results: how much landfill waste has been reduced, the material collection and transportation times, and where the materials are ultimately sent,” Gawenka said. “This transparency is crucial, as it allows companies and the public to be confident that the materials they help collect for recycling are ultimately reused and regenerated.”

Unique Challenges Faced by Medical Institutions

Hospitals are one of the most challenging environments for recycling flexible plastics, but they also fully demonstrate the broad adaptability of this model. Medical institutions generate a significant amount of flexible plastic waste, but there are strict regulations for pollution control, disposal, and classification of waste, which has long prevented these materials from being included in the recycling system.

“Hospitals generate large volumes of flexible plastics, but due to operational constraints, almost no healthcare facilities are able to recycle them,” Goenka said. “Implementing an entirely new workflow within hospitals requires meticulous planning.”

Despite numerous challenges, in the early phase of the pilot, GMR has already collected about 3.97 metric tons of flexible plastic from healthcare facilities in the Phoenix area. Gonka explained, “Because recycling in healthcare facilities is extremely difficult, a successful rollout carries strong demonstration significance. If flexible plastic recycling can be achieved in a hospital setting, other complex environments such as laboratories, pharmaceutical plants, and food processing facilities will also be more confident in adopting similar solutions.”

Downstream Markets and Material Flow Directions

The film materials collected by the project are supplied to downstream recycling markets with stable demand. “Our downstream partners fall into two categories: one processes baled film into plastic pellets for sale to manufacturers; the other directly produces finished products, such as garbage bags, outdoor decking, and composite lumber,” Goenka said. “The project is also evaluating the potential to expand downstream channels through advanced chemical recycling technologies.”

The quality difference between A-grade and B-grade bales affects processing costs, but does not block the recycling pathway. Both types of material can find downstream buyers; pure material produced by warehouses and retailers sells at a higher price and requires lower processing input.

Scale up the promotion of the distributed model.

There are currently 9 sites in operation, and as site capacity is fully released, the scale of waste reduction will continue to increase. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste and the recycled materials recycling company are working to verify the economic benefits and replicability of this model across different regions and industries. “The project will continue to conduct feasibility and scale-up testing, but the initial pilot results prove that this model is suitable for many commercial and industrial scenarios, including manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and venue operations,” said Gawenka.

The distributed solution, which adopts flexible collection and transportation rather than centralized facilities, inherently possesses advantages of scalability. "The on-demand less-than-truckload collection and transportation model can be adapted to different regions and industries without the need to invest heavily in building centralized infrastructure," Gohanka said.

As part of the Flexible Plastics Special Project under the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, this initiative aims to clarify the boundary conditions on technical, social, and economic levels, thereby enhancing market confidence in such recycling solutions. "We hope to validate these solutions, define the various boundary conditions, and build trust among communities, private enterprises, and governments," Ghonka explained. "This will promote collaboration among brands, recycling companies, local governments, and policymakers to replicate verified recycling systems."

Broader infrastructure challenges

The network of small balers has helped make up for shortcomings in the recycling collection process, but Goenka stressed that improving collection and transportation alone cannot fully solve the challenge of recycling flexible plastics. “A circular economy requires the coordinated operation of an entire system, encompassing collection, sorting, and recycling processing capacity—and most importantly, stable downstream demand for recycled materials.”

The alliance adopts a market-oriented strategy as described by Gohenka, starting from downstream market demand to reverse-engineer the entire industrial chain. "Without a mature downstream market, the flexible plastic recycling model cannot be scaled and is difficult to sustain in the long term," he said. "We first clarify the quality requirements for recycled flexible plastics from the downstream market, and then reverse-optimize the collection, sorting, recycling processes, and supporting technologies to ensure the goals are achieved. This ensures that financial investment is directed towards technically feasible, commercially viable, and scalable solutions."

In the short to medium term, policy support plays a critical bridging role. Goenka pointed out: “In the short and medium term, a favorable policy environment combined with stable downstream demand is key to attracting investment and ensuring the economic viability of projects. In this context, extending Extended Producer Responsibility schemes, coupled with coordinated collaboration among Producer Responsibility Organizations, can effectively fill industry gaps until new technologies, infrastructure, and production processes reach sufficient scale to enable low-cost operations.”

Pilot projects with small-scale balers have shown that closing gaps in recycling infrastructure does not necessarily require massive investment in centralized large-scale facilities. Distributed networks, flexible logistics support, and digital technologies can make recycling affordable for thousands of sites currently excluded from existing recycling systems; taken together, these sites contain a considerable volume of recyclable materials.