The company, International Recycling Group, is proposing to invest US$100 million in the “mega-scale” facility in Erie, Pa., USA, that, as Recycling Today reports, would use smart machines to separate and sort residential, commercial and industrial plastics. 

Some of that plastic potentially could end up on the opposite side of Lake Erie, in Stelco Inc.’s Nanticoke, Ont., integrated facility.  

Stelco and International Recycling Group last year agreed to talk about the potential of using plastics as a reducing agent in cokemaking and ironmaking operations. In connection with those discussions, International Recycling said it would study the feasibility of constructing a large plastics recycling plant.

Although a new concept in North America, mills elsewhere in the world, particularly Japan, routinely use plastic in the process.