CHARLOTTE — Recycling bags in Mecklenburg County is now more effective after county leaders took action in response to a Channel 9 investigation from 2023.
For months, Channel 9 tracked plastic bags to see if they are actually recycled when they are placed into designated bins.
It turned out that they weren’t. Many of the bags that were supposed to be recycled actually ended up in landfills.
Channel 9’s Joe Bruno did the original investigation, and he learned what is now being done to save plastic bags from going into the landfill.
It starts with leftover grocery bags and a couple of Apple AirTags that Channel 9 carefully glued, placed, and activated inside the plastic.
Three years ago, we did the same thing and dropped the AirTagged bags in plastic bag recycling containers in big box stores. I tracked them and watched as they went to dumps and landfills. None of them were properly recycled.
That report caught the eye of Mecklenburg County Solid Waste Director Jeffrey Smithberger.
“We were inspired to get into the bag recycling business when your station did a story several years ago on plastic bags that were going to large retail outlets that were not getting correctly recycled,” Smithberger said.
So Smithberger decided to take action. All of the county’s recycling centers now have blue bins where you can drop your plastic bags and know they’ll be recycled.
“It’s something that we took to heart, knowing that we want to try to recycle as many things as we can for our community, and so we have endeavored to get into the bag recycling business here at all of our centers,” Smithberger said.
Some original challenges remain. The fact is that these bags are still hard to recycle -- they have to be clean, and they can also wrap around the processing equipment and get stuck.
So the county found two companies that will purchase these plastic bags to turn them into something better
One of them is Fiberon in Stanly County.
Heather Hatley, the plant manager at Fiberon, gave Channel 9 a tour of the plant and showed how all of these plastic bags are converted into deck material.
They source the bags from companies and municipalities like Mecklenburg County. Hatley says Fiberon saves 80 million pounds of plastic from going to the landfill every year.
“It’s extremely rewarding to be able to have such a sustainable product and company that focuses on that,” Hatley said.
At any given moment, Fiberon has hundreds of bales of plastic. A forklift will grab the bale of plastic and put it on a conveyer, where the plastic will be shredded, melted and formed into pellets.
After that 45-minute pellet-producing process, the small balls go to Fiberon’s other plant nearby or on a train to Idaho. Either way, they eventually transform into boards that you might see on a deck or balcony
“They’re beautiful and they don’t require a lot of maintenance and things like that, so they really last a lot longer and really help our environment a lot,” Hatley said.
Now that we know Mecklenburg County bags will be recycled, we checked into the process using the same playbook from a few years ago.
Bruno loaded up the bags with AirTags, dropped them in different plastic bag recycling bins at retail stores, and tracked their locations.
Using the drop-off locations in the stores, it was new bags, same story. Bags at one store just never moved. Bags at two other locations ended up in a landfill in Anson County.
Smithberger isn’t surprised and says everyone should stay in their lanes, leaving the recycling to the experts.
“I promise I won’t sell milk and bread and eggs, but we do want people to bring their recyclables to us,” Smithberger said.
Smithberger promises his recycled bags won’t be trashed; they will be transformed.
There is one bag that is still pinging. We dropped it off at the Midtown Target, and for the past couple of months, it has been moving around the country. At last check, it is in a warehouse in Lincoln Park, New Jersey.
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