San Francisco-based Brightmark is preparing to launch its second chemical recycling plant leveraging pyrolysis to process mixed plastics—a $950 million project that will come to Thomaston, Georgia in Upson County. The first facility in Ashley, Indiana launched a couple of years ago, which Brightmark aims to scale to 100,000 tons of plastics a year; the ambition is to process four times that capacity in Upson County.
Brightmark calls its technology “plastics renewal,” which it bought from RES Polyflow who developed it to convert plastics to fuel. Bob Powell, Brightmark founder and CEO, says his team finetuned it to be able to make new plastic products from plastic waste (considered a higher-value use than fuel). He says it can process plastic nos. 1 through 7—even if they are mixed with food, paper, dirt, or other contaminants.
