As ReNew ELP’s construction of the world’s first HydroPRS plastic recycling plant gets underway at Teesside, UK, the company has announced that it has entered into a contract with Geminor UK Ltd to act as principal feedstock supplier to the project.
The company also said it has partnered with Ecosurety Limited, one of the UK’s leading producer responsibility compliance schemes, for technical support and expertise in securing Environment Agency reprocessor accreditation, as well as auditing and management of data in the National Packaging Waste Database. With the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging from 2023 plastic producers are responsible for the full net cost of recovering the plastic waste that they place onto the market. Ecosurety will also assist with the issuing of recycling evidence known as Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs) by ReNew ELP.
By working with Ecosurety, ReNew ELP also hopes to encourage the recycling of flexible plastic materials from Front of Store (FoS) collections via the recently established Flexible Plastic Fund, which encourages collection of post-consumer flexible plastic packaging at stores and is funded by a number of international brands.
Both partnerships, with Geminor and with Ecosurety, represent ‘another great step forward for the development of the world’s first HydroPRSTM plastic recycling facility’, said Richard Daley, Managing Director at ReNew ELP.
The project, when completed, will have the capacity to recycle a total of 80,000 tonnes of currently unrecyclable plastic waste annually. The agreement with Geminor will see at least 15,000 tonnes of PE and PP rich plastic feedstock diverted away from incineration and into recycling per year, making up the majority of the feedstock supply for the first 20,000 tonnes per annum phase of the project.
Traditionally supplying the EfW (Energy from Waste) industry, which incinerates waste plastic, Geminor’s move to supplying the recycling industry with post-consumer plastic packaging waste will bring environmental benefits, with advanced recycling estimated to save approximately 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of waste recycled when compared to incineration. All feedstock will be sourced from within the UK, reducing the need to export plastic waste to the EU and beyond.
ReNew ELP is the first plant to use HydroPRS, an advanced recycling solution that uses supercritical water to convert waste plastics into shorter chain hydrocarbon products, the equivalent of fossil resource, for use in the manufacture of feedstocks to create new plastics. The first phase of the project will see the construction of the first of four recycling lines, each able to process 20,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually, due to go into operation by the end of 2022. The other three lines will follow in quick succession. Target waste plastic feedstock is post-consumer, contaminated plastic packaging, including flexible materials such as films, pots, tubs and trays. There is no limit to the number of times the same plastic can be recycled using HydroPRS.