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By: Fernando Jasso Palacio.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Maja World Wide LLC, 10100 Six Pines Drive, The Woodlands, Texas 77380, United States
Quality grading systems for recycled thermoplastic resins providing industrial buyers with a standardized, documented quality classification framework for secondary raw material procurement are a foundational requirement for the reliable integration of recycled materials into industrial supply chains. Despite this requirement, no standardized grading scale has been established for post- industrial and post-consumer PP, HDPE, and LDPE resins in industrial supply chain contexts. This paper presents the design, operational implementation, and commercial validation of a hierarchical three-tier quality grading system Grade A (Near Prime), Grade B (Commercial Grade), and Grade C IJPSE STM — Jasso Palacio — Three-Tier Grading System | Page 2 (Low Grade) developed through more than twenty years of secondary polymer distribution practice and formalized in USPTO Provisional Patent Application No. 64/043,650, filed April 19, 2026, through Maja World Wide LLC. The paper describes the multi-criteria grade assignment criteria for each tier across the six evaluation dimensions of the evaluation protocol (visual inspection, polymer type verification, physical form, MFI, processing behavior, and supplier reliability), presents the commercial grade distribution across PP, HDPE, and LDPE streams (35% Grade A, 45% Grade B, 20% Grade C), and validates the industrial buyer specification compliance rates achievable for each grade across packaging, construction, automotive, and consumer goods applications. Grade A material achieves compliance rates of 96.8–98.1%, Grade B achieves 90.8–93.1%, and Grade C processed through proportional blending achieves 86.4–89.1% across application categories. The three-tier grading system provides the standardized quality language necessary for contractual specification guarantees in recycled resin supply agreements, directly enabling the industrial buyer confidence required for sustained circular economy procurement commitments.
Citation:
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