UK firm Greenback claims it closes the loop with its first advanced plastic recycling plant that becomes operational in partnership with Nestlé in Cuautla, Mexico. The advanced recycling technology turns hard-to-recycle plastics circular and tracks the origins of the material.
The lighthouse project counts with the support of Alliance to End Plastic Waste advance and scale it. The plant will reportedly process the annual flexible plastic packaging waste of 250,000 people.
The outcome of the low emission recycling process is recycled raw material for new food-grade packaging. Greenback Recycling Technologies (Greenback) opened its advanced recycling plant on 25 May 2023 in Cuautla, Mexico together with Nestlé Mexico.
With a global mission to reduce plastic waste, Greenback has already scale out plans in other parts of Mexico, Latin America, and other regions where the same challenge exists. “I founded Greenback to reduce the environmental impact of the growing amounts of plastic packaging that is not recycled.
We have created the first industrial, fully circular value chain for flexible post-consumer packaging. With our voluntary extended producer responsibility programme, the consumer goods companies contract Greenback to pay collectors and sorters to deliver previously worthless plastic waste in exchange for neutralisation certificates,” describes Philippe von Stauffenberg, CEO of Greenback.
As an immediate solution to the environmental problem, Greenback collects the waste and aims to turn it circular. With its 'Enval' microwave-induced technology, the firm transforms flexible plastics into pyrolysis oil, 'π-Oil', which can be used for recycled content for new food packaging. The process also allows recycling of another valuable raw material, aluminium, which is present in multi-layered flexible packaging.
Greenback also says it brings much needed transparency to the waste processing. With its proprietary eco2Veritas Circularity Platform it collects key data, such as origins and amounts of processed material. At the end, it delivers a certification on the neutralised waste, and the proof of origin and circularity for the output materials that are incorporated back into the economy.
Nestlé Mexico is the pioneering company partner in the project. “We are proud of this partnership. We know that only by working together across the value chain, we can achieve a real circular economy that contributes to the health, safety and livelihoods of the local communities,” von Stauffenberg adds.
“We are very proud to inaugurate this pyrolysis oil plant that will allow us to spearhead testing new methods to handle post-consumer urban waste in Mexico. It is a well-known fact that the success of packaging materials in the circular economy depends on having a solid collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure and the design of the packaging to be recycled. Today, as we partner with Greenback Recycling Technologies, we take another step in making this a reality,” said Fausto Costa, Executive President of Nestlé México. Greenback is also supported in this first-of-a-kind project by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste that focuses on advancing and scaling innovative solutions for circularity of plastics worldwide.
“The Greenback team has been able to conceptualise a modular solution that can be co-located with landfills and material recovery facilities to tackle complex and hard-to-recycle, flexible materials. It is the combination that is most exciting to us, as we are looking to find solutions that drive plastics circularity and have the potential to be replicated,“ explains Natalie Stirling- Sanders, Chief Advisor, Head of Americas at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.