Romania-based PET recycler Green Tech, a Green Group member company, has become the first recycling company in Europe to be endorsed by the prestigious Gold Standard for issuing carbon credits for PET recycling activity.
The endorsement is in recognition of the company’s emissions reductions project, through which Green Tech is proactively reducing greenhouse emissions through its recycling process. The company recycles PET packaging and manufactures new recycled plastic products, a process requiring a considerably lower energy consumption compared to the manufacture of the same products from virgin inputs, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Endorsement by Gold Standard allows Green Tech to issue value credits to other companies that offset the carbon footprint they leave through their activity.
One carbon credit, sometimes called a carbon offset, represents the certified reduction or removal of one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) from the atmosphere. It is equivalent to the average monthly carbon footprint of someone living in Europe
The evaluation by Gold Standard yielded the recycler some 453,000 carbon credits on the voluntary carbon offset market with an estimated annual average GHG emissions reduction of 45,380 t CO2 per year over a 10-year crediting period.
For the first monitoring period, Green Tech has received approximately 63,000 carbon credits, some of which have already been purchased by clients who are committed to achieving net zero emissions in the near term. Carbon credits can be purchased directly from Green Tech or from the Gold Standard platform.
“We take great pride in becoming the first recycling company in Europe to achieve this recognition and we believe this shows not only our commitment to reducing carbon emissions but also highlights our mission to create a sustainable and fair environment, both on a national and European level,” said Alina Elena Genes, General Manager of Green Tech,
The Gold Standard was established in 2003 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and other NGOs with the goal of ensuring that projects claiming to reduce carbon emissions are both of the ‘highest levels of environmental integrity’ and contribute to sustainable development.
Established in 2002, Green Tech - which since 2016 has been majority-owned by Abris Capital Partners, one of the leading private equity investors in Central Europe - operates recycling facilities in Romania, Slovakia and Lithuania, and has become one of the most prominent PET recyclers in Europe with a total processing capacity of 150,000 tons/year of PET waste.