The Pennsylvania Recycling Markets Center this week announced the launch of the Products and Commodities GIS Tool.

The purpose of the Products and Commodities GIS Tool is to connect the demand and supply sides of secondary, recycled commodity chains.

The Tool allows users to select and search facilities geographically and by material type. Through Google maps, the zoom feature illustrates markers while identifying facility locations and provides facility name, contact information, and driving directions.

“This GIS mapping tool will help our supermarket and convenience store members to locate farms and facilities that compost food waste. Many of our retailers are interested in composting and this capability would aid in such a transition. We look forward to offering a link to this service on our home page,” said Annette Knapp, the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association’s Manager of Legislative Research.

Searches are currently limited to organic materials but evolution to include other commodities and Pennsylvania recycled content products is underway. The RMC is targeting addition of recycled materials processing facilities and recycled content product manufacturers, regardless of the material(s) of interest.

Additionally, the RMC is actively negotiating website links to and from relevant stakeholder trade associations where business growth can be effected through use of the Tool. This supports diversion of additional materials for use in manufacturing or sale of the resulting recycled content products.

Development was supported in part by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the Department of Environmental Protection.

The online utility was completed with assistance from the Institute of State and Regional Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg.

9/5/2008