Evergreen is getting an investment to expand its bottle-to-bottle recycling

The American Beverage Association and the Ohio Beverage Association, in partnership with Closed Loop Partners, announced today that Evergreen, a plastics reclaimer and rPET manufacturing facility based in Clyde, Ohio, will be the next recipient of a significant investment under the beverage industry’s Every Bottle Back initiative.

The $5 million investment – half from the American Beverage Association in partnership with Closed Loop Partners and the other half fromClosed Loop Partners’ Infrastructure Fund – is part of Evergreen’s $22 million expansion project that will grow operations and double production capacity by 2022. This investment helps Evergreen evolve its business model, expanding its services to process recycled PET plastic into food-grade recycled rPET pellets used to manufacture new bottles, while creating a strong local market for recycled plastics.

The expansion project is estimated to yield at least 58 million pounds of food-grade PET in its first year alone, and cumulatively at least 600 million pounds of rPET food-grade pellets over a 10-year period.

“We are excited to support Evergreen’s expansion, which will help Ohio’s beverage companies close the loop on its 100% recyclable beverage containers,” said Kimberly McConville, executive director of the Ohio Beverage Association. “This is the second Every Bottle Back investment in Ohio, building on our industry’s commitment to strengthen recycling infrastructure, increase the collection of our plastic bottles and work towards using more recycled content.”

Spearheaded by the American Beverage Association, Every Bottle Back is a groundbreaking initiative by The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo to reduce the beverage industry’s plastic footprint by getting more of the industry’s recyclable plastic bottles back to be remade into new bottles, as intended. This latest investment will help finance a new building at Evergreen’s Clyde plant, where recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) will be processed and ground into pellets to be used for making new plastic bottles and other consumer goods.