Mass. man's OBAGGO appliance transforms wasteful plastics, bags into recyclable materials - WCVB Boston

Mass. man's OBAGGO appliance transforms wasteful plastics, bags into recyclable materials

When it comes to recycling, do you ever wonder what to do with things like grocery bags, bread bags, Amazon Prime shipping envelopes, box liners and all of that thin, film plastic that adds up at your house?

A Massachusetts man, who admits he wasn't very good when it came to recycling, decided to create a solution to a growing problem.

“Plastic film is the fastest growing type of packing material. It's growing about 6% a year. Even with all of the bans on the single-use grocery bags,” said David New.

Down in the basement of his Melrose home, New has come up with a new way of dealing with recycling plastics. Welcome to the world headquarters of OBAGGO Recycling.

“So, we make a plastic densification appliance,” he said.

Simply put, New's kitchen appliance uses heat to compress the plastic into dense disks.

New said, in many cases, plastic bags and film are not accepted by curbside recycling because the thin, flimsy material tends to clog the recycling machinery at recovery facilities.

New said by simply changing the shape of the material, it goes from a contaminant to an object that can be automatically sorted, consolidated and shipped to a plastics manufacturer who can use it.

“We’re trying to catch this in your kitchen, before you put it in your garbage can and re-direct it into the recycling stream so that it can be made into some good products again,” he said.

New's idea for a plastic recycling appliance began in 2010, and crowdsourcing has funded his entrepreneurial effort. To date, he’s shipped OBAGGO to 48 states and six different countries.

“Generally speaking, everybody says, ‘I love my OBAGGO and I hope this catches on,’” he said.

New has already partnered with the company Trex, which is upcycling the discs into decking material.

The hope is once there are enough of the OBAGGO systems out there, more communities will start to allow curbside pickup of the pucks as part of the normal recycling process.