Bag Trekking

I was astounded to discover that our bags get shipped to Rocky Mountain Recycling, which is located in Salt Lake City, UT. Frankly, that journey seems wasteful. Are we really sending our bags 1500 miles away from home?

To address my skepticism, I called Jeff Ashby, Director of Rocky Mountain Recycling, for more information. I'm glad I did: Jeff works with Wal-Mart at a national level, so he was able to tell me where our bags go. Well, it's not Bentonville, AK, and it's not Salt Lake City, UT (thank goodness). Our bags get shipped to a facility in Ohio. And this is where companies like Trex and AERT purchase the bags for lumber manufacturing. Bags not sold to these companies are transported to Morristown, TN, to a company called Next Life Recycling. Next Life takes the bags and melts them down to create resin (basically, they're breaking down the plastic so that they can re-use the material to make other products).

So, to be clear, our bags don't go to Salt Lake City, UT (my mistake). But my goodness, the bags still go on quite a journey!