LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Following eight years extensive research, Nextek Ltd has launched a global multi-participant project (NEXTLOOPP) to address a missing link in the plastics recycling stream – Polypropylene (PP).
PP accounts for around 20 percent of the world’s plastic.1 Mostly used in pots, tubs, trays and films for food packaging, it is also prevalent in non-food household and personal care products, which complicates recycling the 700,000 tonnes/annum used in the UK alone.2
Currently PP packaging is either going to waste-to-energy, landfill or being down-cycled into low-performance applications, wasting precious resources. Furthermore, the absence of food-grade recycled PP (FGrPP) means that all PP food packaging is currently made from virgin plastics.
Looming plastic packaging taxes have sharpened a focus on including at least 30 percent recycled content in packaging and transforming the way we manage our short-lived materials to minimise and reduce current waste levels.
NEXTLOOPP uses commercially-proven technologies to separate food-grade PP using marker technologies. These include cutting-edge decontamination stages to ensure compliance with food-grade standards in the EU and the USA. Now we can finally close the loop on FGrPP.
Major organisations including brand-owners, suppliers, universities and industry associations, through to end-users in the PP supply chain, have joined NEXTLOOPP to produce a world-first; high-quality FGrPP that will…
