Plastic Beach
Posy McKinney | Published on 2/28/2025
Soft plastic packaging is a problem. Billions of single-use plastic bags are used by consumers annually. Retailers use large volumes of plastic, only some of which gets to the consumer. Soft plastic packaging does not belong in your blue bins because it jams in the sorting equipment at recycling facilities. It ends up in the landfill. A recent finding believes that 46% of all the debris in the ocean now is plastic film.
Businesses use huge volumes of High and Low Density Polyethylene. It’s used in items like pre-wrap on merchandise, plastic produce and shopping bags, bubble wrap, and plastic packing pillows. This plastic wrap is largely HD/LDPE. It is widely used but not widely recycled, even though it is 100% recyclable. There hasn’t been an accessible means to recycle it correctly.
Plastic Beach is a San Diego based nonprofit committed to promoting sustainability by collecting and recycling soft plastic from commercial and community supply chains. Matthew Clough is the founder Plastic Beach. He and his team were working in the shipping and receiving department of a large power sports dealership. Every week they would throw out around 10 pounds of plastic film materials before the product was even put on the shelf for sale. They learned that plastic film materials normally get thrown in the trash. Only 9% of plastic bags a recurrently recycled. Plastic Beach is working to grow the amount of plastic film material that gets recycled.
Plastic Beach currently has a business on-site collection program and a resident Drop-off program. The on-site collection program partners with businesses wanting to make a sustainable impact on the environment. The enrolled partners contribute a monthly donation. Plastic waste and wrapping materials are collected in bulk, staff and volunteers collect the bulk plastic. The materials are brought to the Plastic Beach facility and compressed into bales. The bales are stored and later collected by partners such as TREX, who can properly process high and low density polyethylene products. The drop-off program is design for resident to collect their soft plastic is a collection bags made from locally recycled brewery grain bags. A full bag can be dropped of at any partner location including:
Solana Center in Encinitas
Agua Hedionda Discovery Center in Carlsbad
ECC Recycling in Oceanside
Origins Grocery. (The Mighty Bin) in North Park
Plastic Beach accepts clean, dry plastic bags and film packaging including produce bags, food storage bags, air pillows, retail bags, newspaper bags, can wrap, napkin, paper towel, toilet paper and diaper wrap, bread wrap, dry cleaning bags. No biodegradable or compostable film packaging or bags.