Friend or Foe: Should Erie embrace a supersized, plastic processing plant?

On Friday, Dec. 11, 2020, a Community Roundtable will commence to discuss the proposed plan by International Recycling Group for a plastics facility in the City of Erie. The virtual event will be from 6:00p.m. to 7:30p.m., EST via Zoom.

This past summer, International Recycling Group (IRG) announced that they would be developing a plastic processing plant in the City of Erie. They cite the plant as a $100 million investment, and they say this would be the largest, and first, of its kind in the world. Yet the environmental impacts of their plan remain unclear. While IRG has had a public meeting, their response to environmental impacts remains unsubstantiated, and one major concern is that they are greenwashing or intentionally misleading the public on their process. The economics of the scheme are shaky and similar plastics sorting facilities have recently shut down in California, Maryland and Utah, leaving communities with broken promises and empty tax coffers. While IRG states that they plan to sort out #1-2 plastics that can be sold for recycling, most of those plastics will be reclaimed by material recovery facilities (MRFs) before they send the remaining (mostly #3-7) plastics to IRG.

But the whole-scale, environmental impacts and hazards of IRG's plan are high. Their process will shred the mixed plastics into small chips to be sent across Lake Erie to StelCo Inc., in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and burned for steel production. Pellet pollution and industrial fires are regular occurrences at plastic facilities similar to IRG's proposal. There are many residents locally and regionally who are concerned. Several environmental organizations have worked together on this Roundtable, and brought in experienced speakers to present these community concerns, and facilitate productive dialogue around IRG's plan.

Email eriegnd@gmail.com to register.

The Speakers: Lynn Armel, Erie County Sustainability Coordinator Jan Dell, Founder of The Last Beach Cleanup Sarah Bennett, PennFuture's Erie Campaign Manager and Clean Water Advocate Nijmie Dzurinko, Co-chair of PA Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival & Co-founder and Co-coordinator of Put People First, Pennsylvania And, Makayla Alicea, Co-founder & Co-chair of the Green New Deal Coalition