CES Trash Bins turn plastic bags into recyclable bricks

in Consumer Electronics Show 2026I was walking around the Venetian Convention Center, drinking the last of my soda and then tossing the empty plastic bottle into the recycling bin. I’m more confident that it will avoid ending up in a landfill compared to other types of plastic, like shopping bags.

But startup Clear Drop is changing that with its soft plastic device. It resembles a wastebasket with a hole in the middle, which can be filled with flexible plastic materials such as bags or gloves. When he has enough in his metal gullet, you can press a button for the SPC to heat up all the ingested plastic and compress it into a brick about the size of a shoebox. Then, using a pre-prepared envelope, you can ship it to a facility in Indiana that processes the plastic.

The SPC isn’t cheap, retailing for around $1,400. But customers don’t need to pay the full amount up front — they can pay $200 initially and then $50 a month for 24 months after that, including shipping and recycling services. Clear Drop did not reveal the monthly cost to continue the service after that, only that it will be less than $50.

While the overall cost is steep, Matt Daly, Clear Drop’s head of partnerships, told me that the initial run of SPC units (which began shipping in recent months) has almost sold out. It’s not just families, Daly said, as SPACs have also turned to small businesses. Pharmacies have expressed appreciation for their units in particular, which process a large amount of spare plastic, handling five or six bricks a day. In comparison, the average family produces bricks in two to three weeks.

It should be noted that not all soft plastics work with SPC – flexible gloves, for example, or flexible vinyl gloves cannot be recycled in the machine. There is a slight learning curve in determining which types of soft plastics will not work in SPC, but avoiding vinyl is most important because it melts in heat.

Clear Drop operates on a lighter and cheaper model, recognizing that the desire to recycle and engage in sustainable living is more desirable to those who can afford SPC’s current price. But there is recognition among Clear Drop customers that what they are doing is validating their sustainable desires.

“There’s definitely a group of people who care and will put their money where their mouth is and do something about it,” Daly said.

In addition to the cheaper model, Clear Drop is innovating the processing of hard plastics, such as Tupperware or other containers made from much stiffer versions of the flexible plastic they currently use. But when I asked them if they would make a version that handles other similar materials like plastic, like the soda bottle I threw away, Daly said no — plastic bottles are a solved problem that already reaches higher recycling rates than soft plastic. The latter, which consists of grocery bags and other flexible plastic items, is the focus of their attention. But they won’t say no to the future of processing other types of plastics.