We love plastic-backed plates as much as we love rich chocolate pudding or puddle-stomping. But up until today, after printing a job, we had to throw the plates away in the trash. What else could you do with a stack of processed polymer? And you can guess that polymer took a long time to “disappear” from the landfills. Steel-backed plates weren’t much easier to recycle -- you needed a metal recycling company to take the steel, and then you were still stuck with the polymer. We tried to console ourselves with Elvis tunes (Make the world go away. / Yeah, get it off, get it off, get it off my shoulder. / Say the things we used to say / And make the world go away) but, you know, we can’t ignore our planet like we used to. We knew there had to be a better way to dispose of printing plates, even though our polymer manufacturers told us otherwise. So we made a better way.

Starting today, photopolymer plates no longer need to end up in landfills. Part of Boxcar Press’s mission is making letterpress printing more environmental and sustainable for all printers. In this spirit – we are proud to launch the Boxcar Press Photopolymer Plate Recycling Program, or BPPPPRP (pronounced BPPPPRP).

Boxcar Press will foot the bill for recycling the plates of any Boxcar customer. All you need to do is pay for postage of the plates back to us. We’ve partnered with a national recycling agency, who will recycle your plates into consumer goods and car parts. We're also partnering with book arts centers to have them collect plates from their members/students and return them to us for recycling.

plate drop-off spots
Book arts center	Location	Contact
Center for Book Arts (CBA)	NYC	Sarah Nichols

Here’s how the program works.

#1. The first week of any month, send your plates to:
Boxcar Press Photopolymer Plate Recycling Program
 “let me help, baby”
501 W. Fayette St., #222
Syracuse, NY 13204

#2. We can also recycle scraps of unexposed polymer, and we can reuse the protective cardboard as well, so send all this back to us. There is no need to take off the silicone and adhesive on your plates.

#3.  If you use both plastic-backed and steel-backed plates, please place in separate bags. 

And that's it! Here’s to keeping our landfills photopolymer-free.