PureCycle partners with League of Women Voters to recycle campaign signs in Florida

PureCycle Technologies Inc., Orlando, Florida, says it will partner with the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Volusia, Seminole and Orange counties to collect and recycle over 15,000 political signs in Central Florida after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

The plastic scrap recycler says it expects the joint effort will divert up to 10,000 pounds of plastic materials from Florida landfills, waterways and green spaces, protecting the local environment and making the state’s 2022 election cycle more sustainable.

Starting Nov. 9 and continuing throughout the month, volunteers from three local Florida LWV chapters will collect plastic campaign signs from Democratic and Republican Party headquarters, as well as citizen drop-off sites. PureCycle says it will then recycle and transform the signs into a sustainable resin that can be continuously repurposed and reused.

PureCycle says most political signs are made from polypropylene (PP), a common plastic found in hundreds of household and commercial products, and that most PP goes unrecycled due to the difficulty and cost of the process. The company says its proprietary technology separates contaminants, odors and colors from PP plastic materials and transforms it into an ultra-pure recycled (UPR) resin that can be reused multiple times.

“Whichever side of the political spectrum you’re on, we can all agree that removing and recycling unwanted plastic trash from our local communities is a net positive for Florida residents and for the environment,” PureCycle CEO Dustin Olson says. “We are thrilled to be working with The League of Women Voters in Volusia, Seminole and Orange counties to keep our neighborhoods clean and waste-free post-election. With PureCycle’s groundbreaking recycling technology, we can turn this year’s campaign sign for a local Republican candidate into a 2024 sign for a Democratic candidate, and vice versa. It’s a true bipartisan moment for our nation.”

With the aid of local LWV chapters, signs will be collected in Volusia County at the Volusia County Fairgrounds on Nov. 20-21, in Seminole County through Nov. 20 and in Orange County at various drop-off locations through Nov. 20. Candidates and campaign volunteers are encouraged to bring signs to their respective locations.

PureCycle says the signs will be shipped from those locations to a recycling center for baling, then will make their way to its Ironton, Ohio, facility for processing and purification.

“Plastics in our environment is almost always bad news,” say representatives from the Orange, Seminole and Volusia County LWV. “This project gives us all a real, tangible way to help clean up the mess. Drop your signs off at a collection site and the League of Women Voters will take it from there. We’re thrilled to be working with our government partners and PureCycle to make it happen.”