Pratt Industries, America's fifth largest paper and packaging company, celebrated the opening today of its newest recycling Material Recovery Facility (MRF), the final phase of its "eco-campus" expansion in Conyers.

The plant, which will receive materials from both municipal and commercial recycling programs, is the most advanced MRF in Georgia. It can process both residential and commercial single-stream recyclables, source-separated and baled materials.

The new MRF and transfer station, located at 1920 Sarasota Business Parkway, occupy 90,000 square feet and feature some of the most advanced, hi-tech sorting equipment in the industry.

In 2013, the City of Conyers chose Pratt Recycling to be its solid waste collection provider, as well as the recycler to service all households in the city, for single-stream recycling. At that time, Pratt built a municipal solid waste transfer station on the campus, the company's first and the first for this area of Georgia. With the new MRF, this creates a closed-loop recycling process, including the MRF, the paper mill, a box manufacturing plant and the waste-to-energy gasification plant.

Pratt Industries Chairman Anthony Pratt said the MRF would process 10,500 tons of materials a month at capacity, including some 5000 tons of paper which will be used as fiber for the 100 percent recycled paper mill on site. That is the same amount of paper produced from more than 1 million trees a year.

"And even the materials we can't recycle can be used as fuel in our clean energy plant which is right next door," he said. "We've been extremely successful in using landfill-bound material - instead of non-renewable energy - to power our paper mill and other parts of the eco-campus thanks to the high-tech stock prep systems we've put in place.

"Now, by building both a solid waste transfer station and a material recovery facility on-site we've also greatly improved the supply chain of material going into the clean energy plant because the non-recyclable material has to be transported just 300 feet instead of 300 miles."

"Pratt and the city have grown together since the company chose Conyers as its corporate headquarters more than 20 years ago," said Conyers Mayor Randy Mills. "It is indeed an honor to welcome Pratt's continued investment and community involvement in our city where they are the single largest employer. Of Pratt's 5200 green-collar employees nationally, over 800 are based out of Conyers. On behalf of our entire community, I am glad that we can host one of America's most environmentally sustainable companies in our city."

Pratt is America's fifth largest corrugated box producer and the only major one that uses only 100 percent recycled paper. It has more than 130 facilities throughout the United States and Mexico.