Originally published 2020-02-14.
A trailblazing Canadian company is striving to build a new standard for sustainability since they've begun turning the bulk of their municipal plastic waste into lumber.
About 80 percent of the plastic recyclables collected across Halifax, Nova Scotia is now being processed by Goodwood Plastic Products Ltd so that they can be turned into building blocks.
The plastic lumber can be nailed, drilled, glued, or handled the same way as wooden lumber—but without any of the same deterioration.
The other 20 percent of municipal plastics are being sent to other recycling markets in the country. Still, Halifax Solid Waste Division Manager Andrew Philopoulos said: “We are very, very fortunate here in Nova Scotia to have that local company taking the material.”
Goodwood recently partnered with a Sobeys grocery store to create one of Canada's first parking lots that are built almost entirely using post-consumer plastics that were reclaimed from many different local landfills.
Mike Chassie
While the bulk of Goodwood's recycled plastic comes from single-use bags, they also process food jars and other common consumer packaging.
According to CBC, the lumber has been used so far to make everything, from picnic tables to agricultural posting and guardrail structures. Goodwood vice president Mike Chassie hopes that their business model will inspire other regions to launch similar ventures.
Recycling becomes tangible through a product
A bench or post makes the idea of material recovery easier to picture than a bin of mixed packaging. The useful question is how the collected plastic is sorted, processed and matched to an appropriate use. The article's local collection percentage should not be extended to all plastic waste produced in Halifax or treated as a current recycling rate.
A new material still has limitations
Plastic lumber is not automatically interchangeable with timber in every application, and it is not immune to every form of deterioration. Product specifications, intended use and the next stage of disposal all matter. The project is interesting because it creates a use for recovered material, while a complete sustainability assessment would also consider processing, service life and what happens when that product is no longer needed.
Goodwood and Halifax’s plastics
Goodwood Plastic Products is based in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia. CBC reported in January 2020 that about 80% of Halifax’s municipal plastics were going to the company, including shopping bags, food containers and peanut butter jars, and being made into synthetic lumber, wharf timbers, guardrail posts and agricultural posts. The other 20% was shipped to other Canadian markets for use in the petrochemical industry. The local outlet mattered because in 2017, when China stopped accepting the material, municipalities across Nova Scotia had to scramble for new markets; Philopoulos said 90 to 95% of the resulting backlog went to alternative fuel and a small portion to landfill. Dartmouth’s LakeCity Plastics uses Goodwood’s lumber to make park benches and picnic tables, and the municipality had bought 50 of those tables the previous summer. “It’s a nice homegrown solution,” said Goodwood’s vice-president, Mike Chassie, adding: “Post-consumer plastic is not going away.”
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