GreenShift Announces Commercial Appliance For Plastic Waste Reduction

Mount Arlington, NJ — GreenShift Corporation has 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.

Design Goal #1: Increase Profit
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.

GIDC estimates that OneLid(TM) will allow operators of food service establishments to save from $1,000 to as much as $3,000 per year. Assuming a 5% profit margin, $1,000 in annual savings is equivalent to $20,000 in added sales per restaurant.

Design Goal #2: Leverage Increased Profit to Achieve Compelling Environmental Gain
,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. GIDC hopes OneLid(TM) will reduce this unnecessary waste and believes that doing so can be expected to benefit the environment in the following important ways:

• Increased conservation of fossil fuel resources and other raw materials used in plastics manufacturing and due to the decreased need to transport and dispose or incinerate discarded plastic lids;
• Reduced generation of waste and waste management costs for food service establishments; and,
• Reduced generation of greenhouse gases and other pollutants due to the increased conservation of plastic and the decreased generation of plastic wastes.

Kevin Kreisler, GreenShift's chairman and chief executive officer, said, "This is an incremental advance that we see as an excellent demonstration of how we can and should be using our natural resources better, and how a small stride forward in technology and methodology, applied profitably, can enable very substantial environmental gains."

GIDC expects to file its patent applications for the new appliance in the immediate term, and plans to start marketing the appliance this quarter to specific early-adopters under the brand OneLid(TM). OneLid(TM) specifications and other relevant information will be made available after GIDC files its patent applications for the new appliance.

SOURCE: GreenShift Corporation