28-29 January 2020 – PCEP members gathered in Lemvig, on the north-west coast of Denmark, to take part in a hands-on workshop held at the factory site of the PCEP member Plastix.
Plastix is a clean-tech manufacturer of Green Plastics. It transforms used, obsolete and abandoned fishing nets, ropes and post-use rigid plastic that would previously have ended up in the ocean or on landfill, by mechanically recycling them into high-quality raw plastic material.
PCEP participants enjoyed a tour around the Plastix facilities and received a hands-on experience of the recyclates, the on-sight testing lab, the products designed using recyclates, recyclate colouring, as well as demonstrations of recycled polyolefin (rPO) odour and processability. The discussions also included a short introduction to the possibilities of nanotechnology to bring additional qualities to recycled polyolefins.
After reviewing recyclate samples and their corresponding data sheets, the delegates sat down together to discuss how PCEP can best address potential concerns about using recycled polyolefins and dispel myths. The workshop concluded two activities for PCEP in this area. One will be a guidance to using recyclates that will aim to establish best practices for rPO available today and make recommendations on what to know, consider and ask for to get the best quality recyclate you need for specific applications. A second stream of work will identify the appropriate metrics for characterising recycled polyolefins, enabling the value chain to compare sources and match qualities to the needs for a given application.
Participants: An Vossen (Plarebel), Charlotte Glassneck (Tomra), Phan Bai (Veolia), Hans Axel Kristensen, Bernard Merkz and Ole Raft (Plastix), Edouard Rivas (Ineos), Catherine Malchaire (Songwon), Mike Baxter (Berry BPI), Giovanni Benedetti (Borealis), Gerold Breuer (EREMA Group), Christoph Hoffmann (Alpla), Kyriakos Mystikos (Thrace Group), Martina Maiocchi (Versalis), Venetia Spencer (PCEP)
PCEP Secretary General, Venetia Spencer, said: ”On behalf of PCEP, I’d like to give a big thank-you to Plastix for hosting such an informative and highly enjoyable workshop. It was an enormous pleasure to see first-hand the innovative work that Plastix is doing with waste material generally considered very challenging to recycle, the products it is enabling and of course the great contribution you are making towards a polyolefin circular economy.”
In advance of the workshop, the participants enjoyed a networking dinner at the beautifully restored castle of Nørre Vosborg.
Polyolefin Circular Economy Platform (PCEP) 