circular recycling

With a majority of marine plastics coming from Asia, a US$106 million fund dedicated to preventing plastics from entering the Asian oceans has been launched. Known as the Circulate Capital Ocean Fund (CCOF), it is said to be the world’s first investment fund dedicated to addressing Asia’s plastic crisis and…

Against the backdrop of a slowing economy caused by uncertainties of Brexit and the US/ China trade war, as well as a downturn in the automotive sector, Euromap and machinery makers forecasted lower turnovers. However, there were some bright spots like the circular economy and digitalisation showcases. Worldwide production of…

Waste plastic has been used to make activated carbon in what could offer a commercial solution to the global plastics crisis. South Australian companyByGen has expanded its focus from agricultural wastes to include plastics with activated carbon being successfully made from several types of plastic, including contaminated plastics waste. ByGen…

The majority of beverage containers in the US are made of PET and in terms of total sales, the US market was the largest bottled water consumer in 2017. According to Statista, the US bottled water sales volume came to about 13.7 billion gallons. Thus, America’s leading beverage companies –…

Oil giant BP plans to construct a US$25 million pilot plant for PET recycling at its R&D hub, in Naperville, Illinois, due to come online in late 2020. It will be based on BP’s enhanced recycling technology, BP Infinia, that enables currently unrecyclable PET plastic waste to be diverted from landfill or…

Austrian extrusion machinery firm SML is developing foamed sheet for hot fill applications with new features in terms of heat resistance, insulation and recyclability in a joint R&D programme together with German thermoforming machinery maker Kiefel. The basis for these new products is a three-layer PET (or PP) sheet with…

Against the back of a Circular Economy theme at the K2019 show in Dusseldorf, Germany, companies have been launching new “green” technologies. For the first time, multi-national Henkel has produced bottles using chemically recycled plastic in collaboration with packaging manufacturer Alpla. Through chemical recycling, mixed plastic waste that was previously impossible to recycle…

In the run-up to sustainability, chemical firm LyondellBasell is building a new small-scale pilot facility at its Ferrara, Italy, site moving another step closer to converting post-consumer plastic waste into new plastics on a commercial scale. The company selected its Ferrara site for the pilot facility due to its long history of…

From increasing its recycling efforts to producing more bioplastics, Thailand is pulling out all the stops to reduce its plastic waste, says Angelica Buan in this report A 2016 marine litter report released by Ocean Conservancy implicated Thailand among one of the top environmental offenders that contributed more than half of the…

Currently, everyone is talking about plastics: On the one hand, it is an extremely versatile material for very diverse applications and a component in countless products in everyday use. On the other hand, however, it is an increasingly problematic material from the aspect of plastic waste. The reason for this…