Klöckner Pentaplast collaborates on new plastic recycling strategies in Spain

Klöckner Pentaplast (kp) has announced it is taking part in a four-year collaboration project to recover plastics from general domestic waste collections.

This unique project is being trialled in Pravia, Spain and is designed to recover plastics from domestic general waste collections and if successful could be rolled out nationwide.

CEUS – “Circular Economy for Urban Plastic Waste” – has been established with numerous stakeholders.

The new state of the art equipment and sorting process can segregate the contaminated general waste, including food waste, and remove any plastics and other materials that can be recovered, recycled or down-cycled, rather than sending them to landfill.

The PET plastic material recovered from CEUS is being used in trials with kp to demonstrate tray to tray recycling, and to encourage consumers to recycle all of their PET food packaging regardless of its condition.

kp will be using the recovered PET from the trial to create mono PET trays that can be used for more food packaging, creating a closed loop process.

Other polymers and materials are being recovered and used by other stakeholders involved in the project.

The scheme will be running several trials over a four-year period to see if the new sorting process methodology can be rolled out nationwide in Spain, making a change to the way we recycle.

Working on CEUS alongside kp are several companies across the full value chain including URBASER for waste management, ACTECO as a recycler, and converters PICDA, NORTPALET and ERUM.