Dennis Denton is working with his second heart, but there is no doubt this one is also firmly fixed in the plastics recycling industry.
Denton, 68, is a pioneering plastics recycler, the founder of Denton Plastics Inc. and an advocate for protecting the environment by taking plastics out of the waste stream.
His Portland, Ore., company recycles more than 40 million pounds of plastics a year and plays a big role in providing a market for plastics collected throughout the environmentally conscious Pacific Northwest.
Denton Plastics is investing $6 million to $8 million to build a sorting and washing line adjacent to its recycling facility. It will be the first washing line in the region for post-consumer plastics other than PET and will boost post-consumer recycling throughout the region.
Denton recently answered questions for Plastics Machinery Magazine.
How did you get started in the plastics recycling business?
DENTON: I was in the wood products business, but that became a dying industry when home interest rates shot up to 18 to 20 percent in the late 1970s. I read an article about recycling and saw that in particular plastics recycling was coming on strong. There was very little plastics recycling being done in 1979. I raised some money from an industrialist I knew to buy into a struggling young company, put in some sweat equity and learned the business.
Was that the beginning of Denton Plastics Inc.?
DENTON: No. Three years into that business, I had a falling out with the industrialist and left to start Denton Plastics. In the beginning, it was just me in one room with one telephone, brokering plastics. I took on a couple of partners so I could get a line of credit at the bank, then eventually bought them out.
What caused you to go from brokering to recycling plastics?
DENTON: I saw truckloads of plastic going into the waste stream and into dumps. I would visit a processing company and see them paying someone to get rid of their plastic waste. I realized this was a business opportunity.
Who bought your recycled resin in those early days?
DENTON: It was certainly different in the beginning. I couldn't tell anyone that I was selling a recycled product because we were displacing virgin resin. In the early 1980s, the virgin resin manufacturers would tell all their customers that 'You don't want to use that junk because it is not any good.' We engineered our resin to be a drop-in replacement for virgin resin. And that's how we did it. We engineered our resin to be as good as virgin. And we stayed in the utility products area. We did not try to mimic virgin in food grades or medical grades. We made resin for utility-grade products.
Was it expensive to figure out how to recycle resin?
DENTON: There was a lot of trial and error. We did not do straight recycling. What we learned was to make a recipe for a particular product. We designed our product for the product that was being molded, extruded or blow molded. Once we got it right, we locked in that recipe.
Why were you successful?
DENTON: From the beginning, I said that recycled resin has to be as good as virgin resin but cost less money than virgin. It is a very simple equation. Early on, being recycled was not a selling point. There were lean years in the beginning.
We have always been willing to try recycling different types of plastics. We had to dig deeper into the waste stream.
How do you deal with resin price fluctuations if you have to be less expensive?
DENTON: We had to develop really good relationships with our customers. At one time, the ceiling for PE and PP was 50 cents per pound. When the price of virgin dropped to 45 cents and I was selling recycled for 27 cents per pound, there was still enough spread. But when the price for virgin dropped to 25 cents or 23 cents a pound, I told my customers that I had to get at least 20 cents a pound because my overhead cost 18 cents per pound. I asked them to stick with me. Ninety percent did. When the price went back up, we did not increase our price exponentially. That was a big part of establishing our business.
How has your market changed?
DENTON: The pull-through demand has changed the face of our industry. Environmental awareness has grown dramatically in the last 30 years for all the right reasons—the carbon footprint, saving the raw material supply, energy savings. You know, you save 90 percent of the energy of virgin resin if you just mechanically recycle it. That is a really important factor.
The pull-through demand means companies like Wal-Mart, Kroger, Target and Procter & Gamble understand the importance of what we are doing. They are coming to people like us and asking "Can you supply me?"
Where do you get your supply of plastic scrap?
DENTON: We sell about 85 percent of our resin in the Northwest, but we buy scrap from collectors all over the country. We have a big thirst to fill the stream for our customer base.
The supply stream has changed. There are more and more 'in-and-outers' as I call them, brokers buying baled material and shipping it overseas. That's one of the reasons we have decided to build a warehouse and wash line here so we can process and use some of the material going overseas.
Please describe the new wash line.
DENTON: It will be in a 45,000-square-foot building next door to our plant. The material coming out of that line will go directly into our plant. The total investment will be $6 million to $8 million and we are going to create 35 to 40 new jobs because it will run 24/7. The new line will produce 24 million pounds a year.
Where will the plastics come from for the new wash line?
DENTON: We want to be the recycler of record for the entire Northwest corridor. We are already working with MRFs [materials recovery facilities] to help them design their products to come to us.
We are working with hospitals in the Portland area and are moving up to hospitals in the Seattle-Tacoma area. We want to collect all their plastics that are not contaminated.
There are still a lot of sources. We have come a long way, but I believe the plastics industry is now where the metals industry was 100 years ago. Collection and advanced technology is carrying us forward very, very fast.
You also sell some virgin resin. Does that make you a distribution company?
DENTON: Some of our customers asked us to supply their virgin resin. About 10 years ago we installed a rail siding so we can buy rail car quantities of virgin resin. We can bust bulk for a slight upcharge, but 90 percent is still recycled resin. As a distribution company, we can offer a good price. Plus, if we know what is going into a plant we can recycle what is coming out at the other end.
How do you source new machinery?
DENTON: We explain to equipment manufacturers what we are trying to do and listen to their recommendations. We mix and match to get the results we are after. Right now we are using extruders from AET and Davis-Standard, and both are good companies to work with. We have shredders from Vecoplan and SSI. Our grinders are from Cumberland. Different parts of the country have different scrap, so there is not an off-the-shelf solution that works for everyone.
Right now we recycle more than 40 million pounds a year. Our extruders can produce 40,000 to 48,000 pounds per day and our baling, grinding, pulverizing and densifying increases those numbers to exceed 40 million pounds per year.
A couple years ago you said you wanted to grow Denton Plastics by 50 to 100 percent. Are you on track?
DENTON: Yes. Since 2012 our business has increased 20 percent but we feel we have hit a roadblock. We need more raw materials, and the new wash line will help with that.
In 2012, I was only two years off the operating table after a heart transplant. I am still pretty enthused about the business but since the transplant I have tried to operate more at the 50,000-foot level. I am encouraging the next generation to pick up the shovel and start digging on their own. I think it has been successful. My daughter is the president of Denton Plastics and is doing a great job here and is a leader in the Association of Postconsumer Plastics Recyclers.
I still come to work because I enjoy it, not because I have to.
Is plastics recycling a good business opportunity today?
DENTON: I have always said that to do anything, it has to be profitable. Recycling plastics can be profitable and it helps the planet. But it is a down-in-the-trenches business. It isn't one that is going to make you extremely wealthy overnight.
I like the pull-through demand we are seeing. Now we need the government to be aware of recycling and to champion the small businesses like ours that are getting things done. Big businesses cannot do this job. They cannot move fast enough.
How would you like to be remembered?
DENTON: I would like to be remembered as someone who was concerned about the Earth and as someone who really wants this to be a better place for his grandchildren. It is important to me that they understand the importance of the planet we live on. And I think that being an active member of society is a good way to teach them.
