Recycle Plastic Film at Five PCC Stores This Fall
Free plastic film recycling will be available at five PCC stores from Oct. 7 to Nov. 8 in a pilot project with PCC and recycling partner Seadrunar.
Drop-off boxes will be available at the Ballard, Central District, Columbia City, Fremont and View Ridge PCC stores those dates for this difficult-to-recycle category. Seadrunar, a nonprofit that specializes in recycling challenging materials, is one of the few local organizations that accepts plastic film and ensures it is recycled.
What is plastic film?
Plastic film is thin and flexible plastic, including items like Ziploc bags, bread bags and newspaper bags, the clear plastic wrapped around cartons and bubble wrap. Seattle Public Utilities stopped allowing plastic film in its recycle carts in 2020 and now advises Seattle customers to put it in the garbage.
Plastic film is barred from municipal curbside recycling because it jams machinery that is designed to sort more rigid materials. However, when sorted and handled properly, plastic film can be recycled by selected industrial manufacturers. (PCC partner Ridwell, for example, collects it as part of its paid recycling service for use in Trex decking.)
In 2023, King County reported that residents would recycle more materials like plastic film if convenient options became available. That conclusion stemmed from a 2022 pilot project where county residents brought in tons of plastic film to local grocery stores, including PCC stores, to be recycled into resin and reusable pellets.
In that project, Seadrunar sorted 50,000 pounds of film, removed contaminants, and then shipped the baled material to a processor who concluded that about 94% contained useful plastic, “an especially high success rate,” according to a report on the program.
Where to recycle plastic film
Despite the demand for plastic film recycling, though, options remain hard to find unless people are willing to pay extra for the service. While some stores offer drop-off bins for plastic bag recycling, a online directory for that service is no longer live – and such drop-offs have raised questions, as with an ABC investigation in 2023 where reporters tracked bags in the bins and found the majority wound up in landfills or incinerators instead of being recycled.
Seadrunar is committed to responsibly recycling the film, and after the PCC pilot is over the nonprofit will determine with PCC if the service can be offered regularly and/or expanded to other stores, said Manwinder Uppal, PCC’s Marketing and Purpose Manager for sustainability.
Currently, one free option for King County residents is recycling plastic film at the Shoreline and Bow Lake Recycling Center/Transfer Stations, with proof of living or doing business within King County’s service area. However, the service area excludes the cities of Seattle and Milton.
Look for Seadrunar dropoff boxes and signs at Ballard, Central District, Columbia City, Fremont and View Ridge PCC stores from Oct. 7 to Nov. 8. Please note that those bins cannot accept “multi-layer plastics” such as envelopes with a plastic insert, candy bar wrappers or chip bags. Ridwell is one of the rare options available for recycling multi-layer plastics.
See how plastic film gets recycled
Want to learn more about how plastic film gets recycled at PCC? See the video below where we visit partner Seadrunar Recycling.