Making Old Plastic New

When Jean-Luc Lavergne started his first recycling facility Masplas International in 1985, Mr. Lavergne had $150,000 in revenue in the first year and half a dozen employees working in a 5,000 sq. ft. facility in Montreal. Today, Lavergne Group, Inc. has 65 employees, annual revenue in excess of $65-million, a second plant in Vietnam set to open in early 2011, and warehouses and sales offices around the world.

Lavergne Group’s plastics recycling operation is far from a typical facility where post-consumer materials are processed for applications such as park benches and containers. He claims he and his engineers have developed a highly specialized process that can turn old plastics into virgin-grade stock. Lavergne Group, he says, is one of a mere handful of businesses in the world that has the know-how to do that.

For the lay person that might not seem significant. But to customers including HP, it is a means to helping them meet their green initiatives. Since 2002, Lavergne Group has processed hundreds of millions of used HP ink cartridges, dismantling them, and combining the plastic with post-consumer recycled plastics for reuse in manufacturing new ones — a rare example of closed-loop recycling in the technology industry.

Read more about “Making Old Plastic New” in Financial Post

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