Mura Technology has become the first advanced recycling company featured in the ecoinvent life cycle inventory database – a database containing more than 20,000 reliable life cycle inventory datasets, covering a range of sectors, for analysing the environmental impact of products and services.This database is structured in such a way that users can trace the impacts of their products throughout the supply chain and understand their results. Moreover, it grants flexibility as it allows different uses of the data depending on the users’ needs.
Now, following a rigorous peer review process, ecoinvent’s newly released version 3.11 database will include Life Cycle Assessment data from Mura’s Hydro-PRT advanced plastic recycling facility at Wilton, Teesside, UK. Inclusion of Mura’s data will allow stakeholders from the wider plastics value chain to explore confidently what this recycling technology can do to support circularity and reduction of carbon intensity.Dr Steve Mahon, Mura Technology’s CEO, said: “Mura’s inclusion in ecoinvent’s database is essential to enabling companies within the plastics value chain and their customers to use our data confidently. We’re proud to be the first advanced recycling company receiving this verification and are committed to continually updating our data within ecoinvent as we develop the technology further.”
The LCA for Mura’s process, independently published by WMG at the University of Warwick, shows an 80% reduction in climate impacts from Hydro-PRT compared to incineration. The study also found that producing naphtha, a fossil oil-based feedstock used in the production of plastics, via Hydro-PRT had a lower Global Warming Potential (GWP) than the fossil fuel equivalent.
The Hydro-PRT process uses supercritical water - water under elevated pressure and temperature, above its critical point - which distinguishes it from alternative chemical recycling processes such as pyrolysis. Hydro-PRT can process contaminated and mixed plastics, such as flexible and rigid food packaging at scale, producing high yields of circular hydrocarbon products for use in the manufacture of virgin-quality, recycled plastics. There is no limit to the number of times the same material can be recycled.
Including hydrothermal treatment data in the ecoinvent database represents our continuous quest to meet our users' needs in understanding their environmental impact, said Avraam Symeonidis, Database Content Lead at ecoinvent. “We are grateful to Mura for the collaboration and look forward to continuing to publish representative data for their pioneering technology in the future.”
Mura is currently partnering with some of the largest global companies to scale its process worldwide. The London-based company aims to have 1,500,000 tonnes of annual plastic recycling capacity in operation or development by 2032.