Brightmark to Recycle Medical Plastic Waste

Brightmark to Recycle Medical Plastic Waste
The advanced recycling company has signed a deal with Jamar Health Products to convert waste plastic slide sheets into building blocks for circular plastics.
Advanced recycling company Brightmark has entered into a strategic partnership with Jamar Health Products, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer of slide sheets designed to safely move or position patients. Brightmark said in today’s announcement that it will convert Jamar’s proprietary plastic Patran slide sheets into low-carbon fuels and the building blocks for circular plastics.
Brightmark’s proprietary closed-loop technology reportedly can process almost all plastic waste, including types of plastic that are difficult-to-recycle by conventional means. The San Francisco–based company operates a recycling facility in Ashley, IN.
Jamar’s Patran slide sheets for lateral transfer are produced in a variety of sizes and styles for safe patient-handling and mobility (SPHM) tasks, including boosting up patients in bed when they start to slump down. Since the product was created 40 years ago, it has been used in multiple SPHM tasks not originally intended by the manufacturer thanks to the ingenuity of healthcare providers, according to the press release.
"This exciting partnership illustrates one of the many ways in which Brightmark’s solutions are helping to ‘Reimagine Waste’ across a number of industries," said Bob Powell, Brightmark founder and CEO. "Jamar’s Patran slide sheets created a solution that revolutionized SPHM, and we believe this partnership will serve as a prime example of the essential relationship between patient wellness and sustainability.”
Jamar Health Products also noted the value of bringing a medical device into the circular economy when it reaches the end of its first life. “Collaborating with Brightmark to find new uses for our Patran slide sheets beyond their lifespan for medical use allows us to achieve sustainability goals and offer a solution our customers have been seeking,” said Stefanie Scott, President and owner of Jamar Health Products. “Jamar is proud to be a family-founded, certified women-owned small business. The opportunity to work with Brightmark to create an innovative waste management solution and do our part to combat pollution provides us with yet another point of extreme pride,” said Scott.
As reported in MD+DI's sister publication, PlasticsToday in August 2020, “Brightmark’s proprietary plastics renewal technology takes single-stream, post-use plastics and converts them into ultra-low sulfur diesel, naphtha, and wax at a reportedly unprecedented scale. The process also is capable of creating the building blocks for new plastics, thus enabling a circular economy in the plastics industry. To date, the company has successfully disrupted particularly challenging waste streams, including boat shrink wrap, e-waste, and children’s car seats.”
Brightmark established its first recycling plant in Ashley, IN, to prove its technology would work at scale and serve the broader Midwest market. Its plan to build what it called the world’s largest advanced plastics recycling facility in Georgia was scrapped in April of this year after county authorities determined that Brightmark would be unable to meet the ambitious goals set forth in the agreement.