Republic is the recycling company in my part of St. Louis County. In March they announced an advanced plastics sorting and recycling center in Indianapolis. When you dig into it, here a summary of what is out there. It looks like companies are responding to the plastic recycling problem by investing in modern automated plants with lots of optical and IR sorters to make a valued product.
Republic has a video from PBS that covers the whole trash issue including sorting recycling.
https://www.republicservices.com/residents/recycling-and-solid-waste/recycling-education
The article focuses on Las Vegas where Republic has a large landfill and plastics recycling center. Article shows that much of recycling sorting is now automated in modern plants. Plastics are sorted by material and color. Humans still watch over what is left after the sort has removed valuables. Lots of corrugated boxes these days from online ordering.
The new Indianapolis facility is paired with a Blue Polymers resins plant a jv with plastics distributor Ravago. Article includes much info on plastics recycling and even pricing of sorted plastics.
Republic has the plant running in Las Vegas (opened 2023) also a jv w Blue Polymers. Indianapolis is the second plant just opened. A third one is under construction in Arizona. A fourth is planned for the Northeast due 2027.
“Each pair of facilities will be able to produce 175 million pounds or 80,000 metric tons of recycled plastic annually, according to a press release. That capacity is split 50/50 between PET and polyolefins.” All three are sold out. Polyolefins is high density polyethylene (milk bottles, #2 plastic) and polypropylene (cottage cheese & margarine tubs, #5). PET is pop and water bottles.
Article reports O’Fallon, Cottleville, and St Peters near St. Louis are adding the ability to recycle polypropylene–No 5 plastic that has been difficult to recycle.
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2025/07/23/missouri-mrf-upgrades-pp-recycling-capabilities/
https://recyclingpartnership.org/polypropylene-coalition/
uses optical sorting to recover polypropylene.
Here is Republic’s press release.
Apparently our crudely sorted recycled plastics are shipped to Indianapolis in bales for final processing.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ampXGhh9RE](%5Bhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ampXGhh9RE%5D(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ampXGhh9RE))
Indianapolis news story with photos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bBaYMl_2tM
Republic brief video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-O3VulwJA8
Tour of Republics Las Vegas plastics recycling plant. Highly automated. Few employees. Multiple optical and IR scanners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ampXGhh9RE
Republic Services ticker RSG reports earnings July 29.