Republic Services Inc. has selected Pennsylvania for the site of its third Polymer Center. According to Pete Keller, the Phoenix-based waste and recycling company's vice president of recycling and sustainability, the Polymer Center parcel, near Allentown, spans about 10 acres.

The Northeast is a large population center with a high volume of material and lots of demand for that material. There's also a lot of conversion capacity, with a number of bottlers in the region. "Early indications are that demand for our rPET [recycled polyethylene terephthalate] flake will be strong. With our existing Las Vegas and Indianapolis facilities, Allentown will help us continue to build out our national hub-and-spoke Polymer Center network".

The Polymer Center and Blue Polymers facilities are designed to work together to produce more than 175 million pounds per year of recycled plastics for use in food grade packaging and other applications. The Polymer Center is owned and operated by Republic, which also serves as a joint venture partner in Blue Polymers along with Ravago. The facilities mechanically process plastics collected from homes and businesses, including PET, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP). Republic says that at each facility, PET is shredded and washed to produce rPET flake for use in new beverage bottles, while HDPE and PP are sorted by color and type and sent to Blue Polymers to be compounded, blended and pelletized, creating custom drop-in products for customers.

The first Polymer Center opened in December 2023 in Las Vegas, and the second facility, co-located with a Blue Polymers plant in Indianapolis, opened in March. Though the Allentown facilities will not be co-located like in Indianapolis, Keller says the Polymer Center's design will be "essentially identical" to the Indianapolis site, which has a nameplate capacity of 80,000 metric tons per year.