A Solution To The Blue Wrap Waste Problem

August 18, 2018

August 21, 2018


Today’s article is by Jonathan Flanders, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Circular Blu,. It was originally posted on the Circular Blu Blog on December 19, 2017.


Key Takeaways:

  • Once blue wrap has been used in hospitals for sterilization, it is usually landfilled despite being a clean and useful fabric
  • Blue wrap is a plastic fabric that is exactly the same as the material used for reusable shopping bags
  • Billions of reusable shopping bags made from extracted resources are shipped across the world and imported to the U.S.
  • We could be creating jobs, decreasing our waste, and fighting climate change by making bags domestically out of this blue wrap waste product instead of importing.
  • The Recycling industry is being strained by extraction of cheap natural gas in the U.S. and China no longer accepting recyclables, this is increasing the need for repurposing.


In the United States we dispose of 200 million lbs of plastic #5 that is perfectly clean and reusable, while simultaneously importing around 100 million lbs of the same exact material, mostly from East Asia.


Essentially, 100 millions lbs of plastic is being thrown away for no reason, despite Earth being in the middle of the greatest environmental crisis known to man (climate change.)


In a capitalistic society governed by climate deniers, the onus falls upon both the consumer and the free market to solve this disconnect.


The stubbornly ironic part is that part of the problem is caused by people making what has been accepted as “sustainable choices”. Bear with me, I’ll explain…


If you’re at this blog I am assuming you know what blue wrap is, and have had an ongoing struggle (or journey) deciding how best deal with this “low-hanging fruit”.


But there are lots of reasons why blue wrap ends up in the trash… or maybe even the RMW stream, increasing waste disposal costs and environmental strain (often due to incineration of RMW).

  • Maybe there isn’t room at your hospital to store blue wrap and you don’t have access to a baler…
  • Maybe your hospital has a contract with a certain waste hauler who won’t recycle blue wrap due to its volume to weight and difficulty to recycle…
  • Maybe you’re having trouble getting your OR staff to properly segregate blue wrap…


Well some of these problems are only going to get worse as the price of natural gas continues to plummet due to the increase in fracking and other methods of petro-extraction in the US.


In fact, the amount of oil produced in the US has almost doubled in recent years.


Some may consider this a good thing but the truth of the matter is that low oil prices interfere with what recyclers are paid for plastics, making it harder for recyclers to recycle and causing a reduction in plastic recycling overall.

It gets worse…


China has recently decided to stop accepting our recyclable wastes. The U.S. Has been exporting roughly one third of it’s recycling, with about half going to china. However, that will end starting on Jan. 1st of 2018. This has created chaos in the recycling industry and recyclers are scrambling to address the issue, while plastics are just going into the trash.


However, there is a solution because there is a process that is even better for the world than merely recycling. This process is called repurposing, also known as upcycling. When Upcycled, blue wrap is not turned into recycled plastic resin, and doesn’t have to compete with the unobtainable price points derailing recyclers.


Blue wrap is essentially a nonwoven polypropylene plastic fabric, and around 80% of it can be collected so that it is perfectly clean and able to be repurposed or upcycled.


Ok, so blue wrap can be upcycled, but what could we possibly upcycle hundreds of millions of pounds of nonwoven polypropylene (NWPP) into?


The answer is reusable shopping bags and tote bags! This seems a little far-fetched right?


The answer is… maybe not.


Here are the results of a U.S. International Trade Commission search query regarding the amount of reusable tote bags imported into the US since 1999.

You can see in the search results that the United States imported over 600 million reusable tote bags in 2015. Despite the slightly misleading title in the search results, reusable shopping totes are categorized under Harmonized Tariff Code (HTC) 4202923031.


Here is a little bit of the environmental impact of the reusable shopping bag craze… A couple metrics on the environmental cost of these reusable tote bags for just the year 2015:

  • 396 million kWh of electricity used in the manufacturing of those totes.
  • 296 million lbs of CO2e- created and released into atmosphere


–Check out this infographic on why your choice of reusable bag matters–


Then there is the staggering statistic that over 6.25 Billion reusable tote bags have been imported since 1999. Divide that by the population of the U.S. (326,814,051 at time of writing), and that means there are almost 20 reusable tote bags for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. assuming they are still around and being re-used.


I think this makes it pretty apparent that reusable shopping bags are just acting as a more resource-intensive disposable bag, completely eroding the intention behind the movement…



Here is a brief overview of the supply of blue wrap and the demand for Nonwoven PP shopping bags:

Yes that’s right… If we managed to only upcycle half of the amount of blue wrap thrown away each year we could make a huge difference.


If instead, we chose to take the material for those tote bags out of our waste by upcycling blue wrap instead of importing NWPP, in 2015 we would have:

  • Prevented 150 million lbs of blue wrap from being disposed of (typically landfilled).
  • Saved 396 million kWh of electricity used in the manufacturing of those totes.
  • Prevented 296 million lbs of CO2e from entering atmosphere.

Circular Blu is dedicated to creating circular economic products that are socially and environmentally responsible. It just makes sense to use PCR blue wrap to create tote bags. It is for this reason that we call them The World’s Most Sustainable Tote Bag. Are you willing to take sustainability seriously and cut through the greenwashing?


I certainly am.


Jonathan Flanders is Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Circular Blu, as well as Owner and Founder of Greenfellow Enterprises. He has a B.S. degree in Environmental Science and Chemistry from Plymouth State University. Circular Blu seeks to create, promote, and sustain the circular economy. Circular Blu works with the healthcare and business sectors to divert materials from landfill and redefine the value of waste by creating sustainable circular economy products. The article is reprinted by permission.


NERC welcomes Guest Blog submissions. To inquire about submitting articles contact Megan Schulz-Fontes. Disclaimer: Guest blogs represent the opinion of the writers and may not reflect the policy or position of the Northeast Recycling Council, Inc.

Share Post

August 29, 2025
Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) Publishes 25 th Report Marking Six Years of Quarterly Data
By Recycled Materials Association July 29, 2025
The Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) has opened the 2025 Emerging Professionals (EP) Program . Now, in its third year, the program provides professionals who are new to the field of recycling, sustainability, and environmental stewardship with discounted access to NERC’s Conference and Foundations Course, sponsored by their employer organization. EPs gain valuable connections with seasoned industry professionals and peers while engaging in discussions on current trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry. This program is designed for those with three or fewer years of experience. “This year, EPs also receive a discount to our Foundations of Sustainable Materials Management course (a live, instructor-led training) developed to provide the key building blocks for understanding the industry,” said Mariane Medeiros, Senior Project Manager at NERC. “It’s a great way to close the loop: gaining both a strong technical foundation and real-world connections in one experience.” Read and Learn More.
By Chaz Miller June 30, 2025
Recycling coordinators know that some people and locations are stubbornly indifferent to recycling. COVID has ruptured civic values and behavior. Creating a recycling culture is harder than ever. Producers know how to sell their products. Now they need to learn how to sell recycling. On July 1, Oregon’s packaging and paper extended producer responsibility (EPR) program begins operating. This will be a first in our country. “Producers”, instead of local governments or private citizens, will be paying to recycle packages and paper products. Colorado’s program begins operating early in 2026. For years we have heard the theory of how packaging EPR will work. At last, we will get results. Five other states also have laws. Their programs should all be operating by 2030. None of the state laws have identical requirements. The Circular Action Alliance, the “producer responsibility organization” responsible for managing the program in most of those states, knows it has a lot on its plate. EPR laws are not new to the U.S. Thirty-two states already have laws that cover a wide variety of products such as electronics, paint, mattresses, batteries, etc. Those laws are relatively simple. Most cover one product. The producer group is a small number of companies. Goals and programs are focused and narrow. They are a mixed bag of success and failure. Packaging EPR is far more complex. The number of covered products is way higher. Thousands of companies are paying for these programs. Goals are challenging. Some are impossible to meet. In addition, local governments treat recycling as a normal service. Their residents will still call them if their recyclables aren’t picked up. It probably hasn’t helped that advocates tout EPR as the solution for recycling’s problems. We are told we will have more collection and better processing with higher recycling rates. Markets will improve and even stabilize. Some of this will happen, but not all. Collection and processing should go smoothly in Oregon. The state has high expectations for recycling. I have no doubt recycling will increase. Collection programs will blanket the state, giving more households the opportunity to recycle. I’m not sure, though, how much of an increase we will see. Recycling coordinators know that some people and locations are stubbornly indifferent to recycling. COVID has ruptured civic values and behavior. Creating a recycling culture is harder than ever. Producers know how to sell their products. Now they need to learn how to sell recycling. Another challenge is the “responsible end market” requirements. You’ve probably seen pictures of overseas dumps created by unscrupulous or just naïve plastics “recyclers”. In response, Oregon and the other states are requiring sellers and end markets to prove they are “responsible”. They must provide information about who and where they are, how they operate, how much was actually recycled, and more. Recycling end markets pushed back. Paper and metals recyclers argue they shouldn’t be covered. They don’t cause those problems. As for plastics, the general manager of one of America’s largest plastics recycling companies said his company now spends time and money gathering data and filling out forms to prove they’re “responsible”. His virgin resin competitors don’t have to. Ironically, we now import more plastics for recycling than we export. Maybe those countries should impose similar requirements on their plastics recyclers. Colorado faces unique problems. The mountain state is large. Its population is concentrated on the I-25 corridor running north and south through Denver with low population density elsewhere. Recycling collection and processing is limited as are end markets. To make matters worse, slightly more than half of its households use “subscription” services for waste and recycling collection. Those services are funded by the households, not by taxpayers. EPR doesn’t have this experience in other countries. Colorado gets to blaze this trail. The second state to go live poses substantive challenges for producers. The good news for both states? Local governments that pay for recycling collection and processing will see most of those costs go away. Consumers are unlikely to see prices rise, for now. National companies will simply spread their costs among all 50 states. Local and regional producers, unfortunately, don’t have that advantage. As for improved markets, remember that recyclables are and always will be commodities subject to the ups and downs of the economy. I don’t see substantive changes in recycling markets unless the producer group’s members try to manipulate markets to their own advantage. 2025 saw new laws and changes to existing laws. Maryland and Washington became the sixth and seventh packaging EPR states. At the same time, California is rewriting its regulations and Maine significantly revised its law. Some of these changes narrowed EPR’s scope to the dismay of advocates. I’m a member of Maryland’s EPR Advisory Council. We’ve been meeting for a year, discussing the Needs Assessment and now our new law. We have our own unique set of challenges. We also have a big advantage. We can learn from Oregon’s and Colorado’s experiences. Tune in next year to learn how we are progressing. Read on Waste360.