Ocean Recovery Group, a new joint venture formed by 4G Recycling, a recycling and waste-management family-owned business, and packaging solutions company AE Global, is a social-business enterprise with a mission.
Headquartered north of Miami, Florida with initial processing operations located in the Dominican Republic, the initiative aims to tackle the influx of plastic that ends up as pollution in the Caribbean and along the shores of the Western Hemisphere.
It is a lofty ambition, but one that the joint venture, with over 100 years of recycling-industry experience is confident it can handle.
“Ocean Recovery Group’s extensive knowledge in the recycling and packaging industries paired with our practical, sustainable and scalable solution will dramatically reduce the quantity of plastics ending up in our oceans, as well as the need for virgin plastics for product production,” said Ocean Recovery Group President, Zachary Kirstein.
Ocean Recovery Group will be the first ocean-bound plastic integrated recycler in the Dominican Republic as well as the first in the Caribbean. Currently, less than 8% of plastics in the Dominican Republic are recycled.
Having teamed up with a local processing partner, Next Generation Recycling Latin America, Ocean Recovery Group is currently constructing its first recycling plant i in La Vega, Dominican Republic. The new plant is expected to be fully operational by March 2022.
“Ocean Recovery Group has the equipment, experienced management, and ability to collect, clean, sort, bale and ship ocean-bound plastics,” Kirstein said. As a social enterprise, it will sell the recovered plastics to re-processors to make plastic pellets, which will then be sold as recycled plastic to manufacturers - thus contributing to solving the planet’s ocean-bound plastic crisis in the western hemisphere.