Bright Green Plastics enables mixed flexible recycling with scalable additive tech

08 Nov 2021 --- UK polymer technology company Bright Green Plastics (BGP) says it has developed an additive capable of breaking down flexible plastics without the need for complex sorting processes.

Branded Bright Fusion, the additive has been created through years of R&D by the company’s team of scientists, who claim it can bypass one of the most challenging and expensive hurdles the recycling industry faces when dealing with soft plastics: connecting polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). 

Jonathan Attwood, product formulation manager for BGP, explains this issue to PackagingInsights and how the highly secretive technology works to solve it.

“PP and PE are immiscible and incompatible in the melt phase. If compounded, the part would have few end uses as the material is inherently weak.” 

“Bright Fusion essentially bridges the gap between the materials enabling the polymers to bond to one another to produce a stronger material, as this is a permanent process the product can be further recycled multiple times.”

Scalable technology 
Operating at a facility in Yorkshire, UK, the company already processes over 40,000 metric tons of rigid plastics for packaging and product manufacturing each year. 

Bright Fusion can bridge PP and PE waste in the recycling process without the need for separation.Attwood says the technology has enormous potential to resolve the high costs, intensive labor and polluting waste export issues resulting from “hard-to-recycle” materials. 

“This is an easily scalable technology that can recycle soft plastics here and now. Although our vision of soft plastic recycling involves developing the process further as sorting the material first would help retain more value, the UK infrastructure for flexible sorting is currently lacking. This [technology] could act as a stop-gap solution until the sorting capability catches up.” 

Flexibles fall into a few main polymer types: LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE, PET and PP, he explains. 

“Our process uses this mixed source as is, without any further sorting. In an ideal world, it would be better first to sort the plastics based on polymer type to gain a purer feedstock. But since the sorting [process] is difficult and expensive, it requires very heavy investment – one company has invested £15 million (US$20.3 million) in sorting for flexibles for supermarkets.” 

Flexible problems 
Recently, industry and environmental organizations have sought to create a more efficient collection and recycling infrastructure for flexible plastics in the UK. 

Producer compliance scheme Ecosurety and environmental charity Hubbub recently launched The Flexible Plastic Fund, which immediately received £1 million (approximately US$1.4 million) in backing from Mars UK, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever.

The Fund intends to improve flexible plastic recycling and reduce plastic pollution by giving the material a stable value, increasing the recycled plastic supply, and meeting the forthcoming UK Plastic Packaging Tax requirements. 

According to Hubbub, only 16% of UK councils currently collect flexible plastics. 

In 2019, flexible plastic represented 22% of all UK consumer plastic packaging, but only 6% was recycled. Flexible plastic creates a huge amount of UK waste due to a lack of proper sorting infrastructure.

Supermarkets to councils 
Supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are also trialing flexible plastic collection points, but Attwood says curbside collection must become commonplace on curbsides rather than in specialized supermarkets. 

“Some areas of the country have started curbside collections of flexible packing, where this has not started is where the important work of supermarkets comes into play. We aim to take material from various sources – this can be from council collections or supermarkets.” 

“Ultimately, once curbside collections take off nationwide, the supermarket collections will become redundant or greatly reduced.” 

While BGP cannot comment on its funding or financial situation, Attwood says the company is currently looking to expand its production site in space and on-site utilities. He concludes that sorting plastics is ultimately the best solution for recycling flexibles, but with the expenses and issues currently in place, Bright Fusion can step in. 

“The technology and feedstocks are in place and ready to go. The purer the final end product, the greater the value and the higher the recyclability score it will achieve, so ultimately it would be best to sort, separate and recycle as a single source polymer.” 

“However, due to lack of infrastructure, the new BGP process can recycle these flexibles as a mixture.”

Rabobank has documented huge investment in advanced recycling globally, estimating the number of plants will more than double by 2025.

By Louis Gore-Langton