Recycling Technologies and Swindon Council Develop Plastics Recycling Facility

Recycling Technologies and Swindon Council Develop Plastics Recycling Facility

The plastics reprocessing company Recycling Technologies has announced that it’s joining forces with Swindon Borough Council to develop an advanced plastics recycling facility (aprf), the first of its kind in England.

Turning plastics into crude oil

Recycling Technologies uses a recycling technique called feedstock recycling to process plastics that would otherwise end up in landfill or the incinerator. The plastics are turned into Plaxx, similar to crude oil, which is then used to make new products.

The company is set to work with Public Power Solutions, a company owned by Swindon Council, to see how feasible it is to open the facility which would be able to process almost all types of plastic.

The proposal to open the facility came about from a research project carried out as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative. Recycling technologies came up with a blueprint for a facility that could process almost every kind of plastic using feedstock recycling.

A demonstration facility has already been set up in Scotland, and its aim is to process 15,000-25,000 tonnes of plastics each year.

The managing director of the council-owned Public Power Solutions said that the company is committed to having a plastics processing facility in Swindon by 2020 so it can make Swindon Council a leader in plastics recycling. Swindon is where Recycling Technologies is based, and the town houses its headquarters as well as a huge manufacturing facility.

‘Urgent need’ to increase plastics recycling capacity in the UK

The company’s CEO said that it’s delighted that Swindon is going to be the home of England’s first ever aprf. He added that there is an urgent need to increase the plastic recycling capacity in the UK to stop plastics ending up in landfill or the environment, and to create jobs in the area.

Swindon Borough Council was considering ending kerbside plastic collections temporarily back in October, due to the high cost of the service. Costs were driven up mainly by China’s ban on plastic imports. The council consulted with residents, and published its 10-Year Waste Strategy in November, which included plans to look into how it collects and processes plastics, and a commitment to finding and developing new waste treatment technologies.