The Plastics Recycling Show Europe (PRSE) is fast approaching – on June 19 and 20, four halls of the RAI convention centre in Amsterdam will be filled with plastics recycling industry professionals.
Sustainable Plastics - the publication supporting the organisers behind all PRS events – spoke with the founder of MBRC The Ocean Sven Jacobi to discover what the Germany-based organisation has in store for PRSE. The non-profit foundation is launching a wide range of recyclates made from plastic waste collected from beaches in Europe and across the globe.
Why do you think it’s important to be at PRSE?
PRSE is the most relevant fair for our products. For us it is important to be at PRSE not only because it is the most important fair, but also because the timing is perfect. We just launched our new recyclate products made from plastic waste collected in coastlines around the world.
What are you going to exhibit at PRSE?
We have launched a lot of new products. Of course we cannot bring them all to PRSE, but we will showcase a few of them at our booth. The entire list includes clear and light blue PET flakes; white, black, and coloured PP pellets; natural, white, and coloured HDPE pellets; mix colour HDPE flakes; LDPE pellets; ABS pellets; and blue and natural PC pellets.
Can you guide us through your process from waste collection to these products?
First of all, we track what we collect - that's very important for us. The moment we collect the trash from the coastlines around the world, say in China, or in Indonesia, or in Africa, we know when it was collected and where it was collected. After collection, we sort the plastic waste, crush it, bale it, and send it to a partner recycling company. We scan everything, so we know exactly where it was bailed, where it was transported, and by whom. Importantly, we only work with partners certified as meeting our standards. Our local recycling partners then transform the plastic waste into flakes or pellets through a process of melting, cooling, cutting, and pelletising.
Where do you operate? Do you have any collection hubs in Europe?
We have 250 cleaning hubs around the world and over 10,000 collectors, a combination of volunteers and employees. We have a couple of cleaning hubs in Europe: in France, the UK, and Croatia – which is currently our largest hub. We are also opening new hubs in Majorca and Malta.
In Croatia, we are responsible for all the islands in the northern region. We work together with the government to clean the beaches and collect a lot of trash there. During our eight clean ups, we collected over 2.800kg of waste. Each collection initiative counted with a group between 10 and 150 volunteers and a total of over 710.
The main items we collected were packaging, PET plastics, mixed plastics like boxes and cans, and of course non plastic like metals aluminium or glass. The most curious items we found were a mattress, tyres, and huge plastic pipes.
Who is your recycling partner in Croatia?
Our partner is Ponikve Krk, based on the island of Krk. They coordinate the recycling of all the plastic waste we collect in Croatia. For the first time, together with another partner we are also now starting to manufacture end-products like waste bags with the plastic we collect. The volumes are small because we don’t collect as much waste as in Asia, but it’s a start.
What other end-products can be manufactured with your recyclate?
Our recyclates can be used in the production of packaging materials, for example. We are also very excited to announce that we can now also produce textiles. We work with a company in China which can use our flakes and produce yarn out of it. We already have a first client which is ordering this yarn from our partner’s factory in China.
What level of demand are you seeing for your products?
At this stage, we have a lot of requests from the industry especially for products which are directly sold to end consumers. That’s because the end consumer sees that there is value when choosing a product that is made from coastal plastic. We get a wide range of orders in terms of volume: from just a few hundred kilogrammes up to about 500,000 tonnes per year. That larger order is for manufacturing big trash bins. Some of our existing clients include Telecom and DHL, they’re looking to become more sustainable with us.
Have you or your partners found any challenges in working with this kind of waste plastic?
Yes, I’d say that competing against virgin plastic is definitely a challenge. The quality of our recyclate might at first not be as pure as required by some customers, or it might be challenging for their machines. We had a client in Denmark who wanted to use our pellets, and although he was very keen, it did not work out because his machines would only be able to produce at 50% output in comparison with virgin material. Our price is also more expensive than virgin plastics, which could be a challenge for some companies. But the companies that want to make a difference, that really want to make a sustainable contribution, they go the extra mile and pay the premium because they see that the end-user is actually willing to pay for it.
Find MBRC The Ocean at stand L19.