Rumpke and Eastman join forces to expand recycling of PET waste

Abstract

On February 8, 2024, Rumpke Waste & Recycling (Rumpke) and Eastman announced a partnership to help address the global plastic waste crisis. Later this year, Rumpke will begin collecting and sorting hard-to-recycle and colored PET packaging waste, materials that are reportedly largely unaddressed in today's recycling ecosystem and will provide 100 percent of this waste stream as feedstock to Eastman's molecular recycling process. Eastman will then turn this waste stream into virgin quality polyesters with its molecular recycling technology to be used across a range of packaging applications and to expand the circular economy for polyesters.