The facility has increased processing capacity by 15 to 20 percent since the upgrade. Photo: FCC Environmental Services.
The retrofit, funded by a $4.25 million grant from The Recycling Partnership, will help the facility capture plastic film
By Tess Kazdin, Digital Editor, Recycling Today
April 6, 2026 – FCC Environmental Services has completed upgrades to its Houston material recovery facility (MRF), installing new equipment from Van Dyk Recycling Solutions to enhance the recovery of plastic film and flexible packaging (FFP).
In August 2025, The Recycling Partnership (TRP) awarded FCC a $4.25 million grant to increase plastic film recovery at the 120,000-square-foot MRF. According to TRP, FFP makes up 34 percent of the total U.S. plastics packaging industry but has a low annual recycling rate due to its tendency to disrupt recycling equipment, high processing costs, high contamination rates and limited end market demand.
Despite this, FCC Vice President of Engineering and Post-Collections Andrea Rodriguez-Pinero says the retrofit was spurred by increased demand for clean FFP bales.
“We’ve been in discussions with several companies, and demand for clean film bales is growing,” she says. “They’re looking for contamination levels below 5 percent. We were previously seeing 20-25 percent, so we worked with Van Dyk to significantly improve quality.”
To improve bale quality, the retrofit included three Tomra optical sorters designed to separate fiber and containers from film, along with new conveyors. Two sorters feature a disk spreader designed to evenly distribute material across the belt.
“That’s an innovation we hadn’t seen before,” Rodriguez-Pinero says. “It’s new, and it’s performing very well.”
Prior to the retrofit, the facility processed 45 tons of material per hour. Since installing the new equipment, Rodriguez-Pinero says capacity has increased by 15-20 percent.
The facility also remained open throughout the retrofit.
“The facility remained operational throughout the retrofit,” Rodriguez-Pinero notes. “Thanks to strong coordination with Van Dyk, we completed nearly all upgrades without disruption, with only a brief four-day shutdown required.”
The MRF’s 40,000-square-foot tipping floor continued material intake during the four-day closure.
The MRF serves the city of Houston, as well as Huntsville and La Porte, Texas, and surrounding commercial and private customers throughout the region.
Final commissioning will be achieved once quality control testing confirms that FFP bales consistently meet the target of less than 5 percent contamination.
As seen in Recycling Today.