(WJET/WFXP) – New funding will go towards constructing a new plastics recycling facility right here in Erie with the goal to create more jobs and reduce nationwide emissions.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced in a release that a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee of up to $182.6 million will go towards two projects:

• Building an injection system tower at a steel manufacturing facility in northwest Indiana.

Around 334 construction jobs will be created through these projects, including 304 jobs at the Erie plant site and 30 jobs to build the injection system at the steelmaker’s site in Indiana. There will also be an additional 221 operations jobs for both Erie and northwest Indiana.

According to the release, the new Erie facility will “recycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and polypropylene (PP) polymers and manufacture CleanRed, a newly developed iron-reducing agent engineered from residual waste plastic that would otherwise be sent to landfill.”

CleanRed reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the steelmaking process by replacing a portion of coking coal used in blast furnaces or anthracite coal used in electric arc furnaces.

Once this new project is complete, IRG Erie will be the first company in the U.S. to produce and sell a plastic-waste-based iron-reducing agent to domestic steel manufacturers.