Take Your Political Yard Sign and . . . Recycle It

If you live in Florida’s Seminole County and happen to have a now-obsolete Biden-Harris 2024 campaign sign that you want to get rid of in a responsible manner, you’re in luck. Advanced recycling company PureCycle Technologies has teamed up with the Seminole County government and local chapter of League of Women Voters to collect the signs and recycle them into PureFive resin, which can be used to produce new products, packaging, or maybe even a Harris-Walz 2024 yard sign.

The partnership has collected nearly 800 pounds of campaign signs following the recent primaries, PureCycle said in its press release. The signs are typically made from #5 plastic, which is costly to recycle by conventional means, and the signs consequently end up in landfill. (I don’t know for a fact that the Biden campaign used plastic signs, given that the administration is staunchly anti-plastic. I guess I should also add at this point that PureCycle is nonpartisan and, to state the obvious, will recycle signs from any political party.)

PureCycle CEO Dustin Olson sees this initiative as a blueprint for a nationwide effort. “I look forward to seeing even more signs collected and recycled during the upcoming general election in November and for years to come,” he said in a prepared statement.

Related:Major US Policy Shift on Global Plastics Treaty

PureCycle’s patented solvent-driven purification recycling technology, first developed by Proctor & Gamble, removes color, odor, and other impurities from #5 plastic waste, resulting in an ultra-pure recycled plastic that can be reused multiple times, according to the company.

We applaud this grass-roots effort to clean up politics, one lawn sign at a time.