Kingspan launches ocean plastic clean-up partnership and aim to recycle one billion plastic bottles annually by 2025

Kingspan, the global leader in high performance insulation and envelope solutions for low carbon buildings, has committed to recycling 500 million plastic bottles each year by 2023 for use in its insulation, with a further target of one billion bottles each year by 2025.

This recycling initiative is part of a broader Kingspan programme, together with the company’s 2020 Net Zero Energy manufacturing target to produce its energy-saving products in a low carbon and environmentally responsible way.

Kingspan is already manufacturing insulation using recycled plastic but from today will be adding recovered ocean plastic to this manufacturing chain, made with raw materials from its plant near Barcelona.

This plant already recycles 250 million bottles each year and has set an ambitious target to quadruple this over six years.

To achieve this target, Kingspan has partnered with the EcoAlf Foundation and under a three-year partnership, the company with proactively help to remove up to 150 tonnes of waste from the Mediterranean each year through the EcoAlf Foundation’s network of fisherman.

Kingspan will reuse as much of the ocean plastic recovered as it can in its production.

Gene Murtagh, CEO of Kingspan Group, said: “We take our sustainability commitments very seriously at Kingspan. Today’s announcement, part of the Planet Passionate commitment in Kingspan’s sustainability plan, forms part of a longer-term strategy we are developing around supporting the circular economy and increasing our use of recycled materials.”

Javier Goyeneche, founder of the EcoAlf Foundation, said: “We are excited to have formed this partnership with Kingspan, which will help us expand our initiative to clean the oceans.”

“Kingspan is an ideal partner because they can help us close the loop by using large volumes of the materials we recover from the seas in their products.”

“But even more importantly, we want partners who share our values of wanting to make the planet a cleaner and more sustainable place and we look forward to working together with Kingspan in the spirit.”