Commercial appliance intended to reduce quantity of plastic waste

Mount Arlington, NJ— GreenShift Corporation announced that its wholly owned portfolio company, GreenShift Industrial Design Corporation (GIDC), has completed its conceptual design of a new commercial appliance for the reduction of plastic waste produced by the food services industry.

Studies indicate that about 1.5 pounds of trash are produced for each fast food restaurant meal served, of which 50.5% is paper, 13.6% is plastics and 1.1% is glass. The new GIDC appliance specifically aims to reduce the contribution to this made by unused plastic beverage lids.

According to a study published by the Freedonia Group, Inc., the food services industry purchased about 100 billion plastic beverage lids during 2003 for about $0.005 each or for a total of about $500 million.

Some industry sources estimate that more than 10% of all plastic lids purchased are discarded unused. This equates to about 10 billion unused plastic lids per year with a value of about $50 million.

Unused plastic lid waste is generated mostly because of how lids are currently handled and dispensed — most conventional methods force consumers to handle multiple lids in order pick up a single lid, which creates waste, clutter and other sanitary issues. GIDC’s new OneLid(TM) appliance is designed to minimize waste by ensuring that food service customers are presented with only one lid and by allowing restaurant staff to easily improve the handling of their inventory.

1,000 plastic lids weigh about 5 pounds, which means that about 500 million pounds of plastic lids were purchased in 2003, of which in excess of about 50 million pounds were discarded unused.