P C Plastics LLC

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Why do we have to pay PC Plastics to give them our foam? A: Location, location, location. This modest fee helps offset cost we incur by doing business in the urban Portland area, rather than in cheaper sites outside of the metropolitan area, which are harder to reach. The drop sites at Far West Fiber use the fees to help offset the cost of hauling the material to our plant, and the cost of maintaining our trailers. If you drop your foam off at our plant, we use the drop fees to help offset the high cost of rent for our space in Portland. Why doesn't anyone else do this? A: There are a number of reasons: The main deterrent to this system is also the reason we do what we do. It concerns the cost of moving such bulky, lightweight material. A 50- foot trailer can bring in only 1,200 lbs of foam material, whereas the same trailer can haul out 40,000 lbs of finished goods. This means it takes roughly 35 trailer loads of foam material to make a single load of finished goods. Therefore, every 50-foot tractor-trailer load of plastic pellets we put back into consumers households represents 35 times that amount of material that we saved from the landfill for a long time to come. Unlike most businesses, we don't have a one-stop shop for our raw materials. We have to source them from a very large number of places, some post-consumer, and some post-industrial. With the variety of materials we acquire, we have to create consistent products that meet strict individual customer specifications year in and year out. To do this takes a number of experts in the various fields of logistics, machinery, manufacturing, plastics, and finance. The run up is long, and the financial rewards are modest, but it provides a tremendous benefit to the community and to the environment. Why can't we throw our foam into our regular co-mingled recycling bins, and have it picked up curbside? A: Haulers and recyclers are paid by the pound, so traditional material recycling facilities (MRF's) do not get paid handsomely for removing lightweight materials from the waste stream. Thus, there is no incentive for them to remove it. Additionally, the "melt point" for plastic is low, around 350 F. This means that contaminants don't get burned out, or otherwise purged in the melting process, like they do with steel or aluminum. So the material is easily ruined when comingled with other materials. Paper, tape, etc., all represent contamination for our products, and in fact, for most recyclable plastics. They have to be cleaned off, in order for the plastic to run through our process. Why do I have to drive so far to drop my foam off? A: We are always working on setting up additional drop sites, and would love to hear from you so we can get one near you. Where can we buy PC Plastics' products? A: PC Plastics is a "C2B" company. Consumer-to-Business. Our finished products are the raw materials for companies that make the products consumers buy in stores.

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