From the Summer 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling.
By Chris Voloschuk
In March, leaders from Republic Services Inc. and Blue Polymers LLC opened North America’s first Polymer Center and Blue Polymers plastics recycling complex in Indianapolis, where the joint venture partners say they will “transform” plastics circularity from curbside collection to consumer packaging and back again.
“The opening of the first Polymer Center-Blue Polymers complex is a significant milestone in advancing circularity for plastic packaging in Indiana and across the region,” Republic President and CEO Jon Vander Ark says. “As a leader in environmental services, Republic Services is uniquely positioned to help meet customers’ demands for sustainable packaging and support Indianapolis’ vision to create a more resilient future.”
The Polymer Center and Blue Polymers facilities are designed to work together to produce more than 175 million pounds annually of recycled plastics for use in food-grade packaging and other applications. The Polymer Center is owned and operated by Phoenix-based Republic, which is a joint venture partner in Blue Polymers along with Luxembourg-based polymer recycling and distribution company Ravago.
The Indianapolis recycling complex includes two buildings totaling approximately 300,000 square feet. Together, the two operations are expected to create about 125 permanent, highly skilled local jobs.
The project was supported through a grant from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Central Indiana Waste Diversion Pilot Project; tax credits from the city of Indianapolis in conjunction with Develop Indy, the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development and Employ Indy; Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC) incentive-based tax credits, based on the company’s investment and job creation plans; and IEDC Hoosier Business Investment tax credits, designed to help companies invest in smart manufacturing and new technologies.
Making advancements
While the Indianapolis complex opened recently, the first Polymer Center opened in Las Vegas in December 2023. Both locations process plastics collected from homes and businesses, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP).
At each facility, PET is shredded and washed to produce recycled PET (rPET) flake, which is used to manufacture new beverage bottles. The HDPE and PP are sorted by color and type and then sent to Blue Polymers to be compounded, blended and pelletized, creating custom drop-in solutions for customers.
Republic Vice President of Recycling and Sustainability Pete Keller tells Recycling Today that olefins processed at the Las Vegas facility have been transported to Indianapolis to help provide the Blue Polymers facility with feedstock as it starts up, adding that the facility had been in a commissioning phase for the 60 days prior to its official opening.
Overall, he says there is growing excitement for what the Indianapolis complex will be able to produce.
“We look at this as a forward integration in the plastics value chain,” Keller says, highlighting the Polymer Center’s ability to produce high-grade polyethylene (PE) and PP for food and nonfood packaging and provide secondary sorting of mixed-color resins. Over time, the facility is expected to be able to sort blue- and green-colored material that could later be sold to specific customers.
Keller notes a lot of PET goes into textile applications, such as clothing and carpet, but then is limited in its end-of-life recyclability.
“We’re real excited about the bottle-to-bottle [circularity] and the potential to keep that material in the marketplace multiple times,” Keller says of the Polymer Centers. “We have this sense that we can turn this material over six, seven times as opposed to turning it over once.”
Additionally, the process for recycling most HDPE jugs is designed to return them to store shelves in as few as 120 days.
Moving material
Republic operates 78 recycling facilities across the U.S. When it comes to the Polymer Centers, Keller says the company views them as working together in a “hub-and-spoke” model.
For the Indianapolis complex, materials will be sourced from Indiana and surrounding states such as Minnesota and Michigan, but could extend to Missouri and Tennessee, for example.
“We’ve got the opportunity to pull material in from western Pennsylvania and probably into northern Virginia,” Keller says. “The material wants to move.”
The company will primarily source plastic through residential collection, with a small percentage coming from commercial programs. Bales of PET, natural and mixed-color HDPE and PP will reach the Polymer Center for secondary sorting. While rPET flake will go back into bottle production, other high-grade bales will head to Blue Polymers where they will be washed, purified, extruded and pelletized and blended based on customer needs.
“If a customer wants a 50-50 or 70-30 version of recycled content, or if they need certain masterbatches, certain colors or certain additives, we’ll have all those capabilities under one roof in Blue Polymers,” Keller says. “We’ll be able to produce batches of specific resin for specific customers.”
The Indianapolis facility’s capacity is 80,000 metric tons on an inbound basis per year, and Keller expects the Polymer Center to accept 75,000 short tons or more. While 100 percent of the olefins processed at the complex will be utilized by Blue Polymers, some PET will be made available on the spot market, though Republic has customers lined up for the majority.
“On the PET side, we keep a little in the spot market,” Keller says. “Some of that’s price discovery. We’re still kind of new at this. And some of it is just that we think it’s healthy to have a little ability to move material off to different customers month to month.”
The Indianapolis complex includes a rail spoke, giving the joint venture partners the ability to ship materials by truck or rail, though Keller says the majority of outbound material will move by truck, while a lot of inbound material will arrive via rail.
Building up
Acknowledging a process of continuous learning since the Las Vegas Polymer Center started operations, Keller says that as a “Generation 2” facility, the Indianapolis location has a few design elements not included in the former, though many details remain the same.
“I would say every project needs to be a little bit better than the last one, and that’s been applied here,” he says. “We have a perspective that Indianapolis has the most capable processing line of any facility that we’ve seen.
“We have the ability to take various grades of recovered resins from multiple markets and produce materials that are drop-in ready for packaging. That’s something that certainly we’re very excited about. … We think we’re going to be offering material to the market that the market has not had access to before, and what we hope to accomplish is to have high uptime, high yields and a consistent movement of material.”
Similar to the Las Vegas facility, Indianapolis’ Polymer Center will utilize processing lines manufactured by German companies Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH.
The facility incorporates a Stadler-designed dual-line system. Bales of mixed plastics are opened using Stadler’s WireX machine for fully automated wire removal, then are fed into the facility and processed separately on two lines dedicated to PET and mixed plastics, with capacities of 5.5 tons and 5 tons per hour, respectively.
On the PET line, mechanical separation is followed by cleaning to remove ferrous particles. A Stadler STT2000 ballistic separator then sorts materials into rigid, flexible and fines fractions, which undergo near-infrared (NIR) sorting to further separate caps, rings and labels. The 3D fractions are processed through Stadler’s Label Remover and Label Separation Hood. Clear PET, caps and rings are directed to the washing line for granulation and cleaning, while colored PET is compacted into bales.
Materials entering the mixed plastics line are sorted into fines and sieve overflow. The heavier fractions from the overflow are separated into four PE fractions—natural, white, red/orange/yellow and other/color—and two PP fractions—natural/white and other/color. PET is recovered from the stream and redirected to the PET line for additional processing, while the final sorted products are stored in dedicated bunkers before being baled for market distribution.
According to Stadler, the linear flow of the plant’s design enhances operational efficiency by improving access to all areas, simplifying maintenance and incorporating a fully enclosed presort area and a control room with a comprehensive view of material flow and baler operations. The equipment developer adds that the facility also prioritizes workplace quality with its open, well-lit environment.
“Our partnership with Republic Services goes beyond constructing state-of-the-art recycling facilities,” says Mat Everhart of Colfax, North Carolina-based Stadler America. “It’s about shaping the future of plastics recycling in North America. The success of the Indianapolis plant marks another milestone in our commitment to supporting a more circular economy through advanced sorting technology and strategic collaboration.”
Increasing supply
Keller says one of Republic’s focuses has been on now it can capture more material at the curb.
He surmises that single-use PET beverage bottles are collected at a rate of about 30 percent in the U.S. in terms of capture and recycling, and his company is committed to increasing that number.
“For those folks out there that don’t think plastics recycling is real, we’d like to stress otherwise and encourage consumers, whether they’re on the go or at home, anytime there’s a rigid plastic package, please put it in the blue bin as opposed to the black bin,” he says. “We’d love an opportunity to be able to process captured material and, ultimately, get it back in the marketplace.”
Facility network
Republic’s first Polymer Center in Las Vegas has provided a learning experience for the company along with an outlet for bales of plastic. The facility, which at startup was expected to produce more than 100 million pounds of recycled plastics per year, has been progressing well, according to Keller.
“Within the last couple months, we’ve gotten to a steady state of operations where we’re shipping material as we’re producing it,” he says. “Demand is there for everything that we produce. We haven’t had an issue putting the [rPET] flake to market, and the majority of that material is going back into beverage containers.”
He notes that the ethylene and propylene plastics the facility accepts are being shipped to Indianapolis on a temporary basis and will eventually be sent to Blue Polymers’ under-construction facility in Buckeye, Arizona. He adds the Buckeye facility is expected to be operational late this year or in early 2026.
Republic intends to operate four Polymer Centers in the future, and Keller says the third will be located in the Northeast U.S. The company has not yet announced the location, though Keller says a site currently is under development.
For more information
Republic Services Inc., Phoenix, Arizona, www.republicservices.com
Stadler America LLC, Colfax, North Carolina, 336-497-4572, https://w-stadler.com
Chris Voloschuk
Chris Voloschuk is Associate Editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at [email protected]. This story was published in Plastics Recycling, a joint publication of Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing and Recycling Today.
