LyondellBasell propels Nextloopp food-grade PP recycling initiative as newest participant

19 Jul 2022 --- LyondellBasell is joining Nextek’s Nextloopp food-grade recycled PP (FGrPP) packaging initiative, which has brought together more than 40 major industry players to pioneer post-consumer plastics recycling and product design.

“LyondellBasell is one of the largest producers of virgin PP resin and its participation in the Nextloopp project is an expression of its focus on delivering the best circular solutions for PP products. Its valuable expertise will help drive the Nextloopp project forward,” professor Ed Kosior, founder of Nextek and Nextloop, tells PackagingInsights.

Nextloopp, launched in October 2020, is a global multi-participant initiative that aims to create FGrPP from post-consumer packaging.

“The outcomes from the Nextloopp project demonstrate the pathway forward for circularity in product design and recycling. These principles can be adopted by many other products and plastic types to boost the quality and quantity of recycled plastics,” says Kosior.

Closing the PP loop
To unlock the full value of plastics, critical gaps must be addressed so these valuable resources can be circulated back into the economy after use.

Nextloopp highlights that PP is the most widely used plastic in food packaging.“The development of new solutions and the increase of recycling rates is key to addressing plastic waste and climate change,” says Richard Roudeix, senior vice president for olefins and polyolefins EMEAI at LyondellBasell.

“In the area of post-consumer PP for food packaging, we are eager to join and support the research of the Nextloopp project, together with other industry players, to help find new solutions.”

Nextloopp explains that PP is the most widely used plastic in food packaging. The project aims to close the loop on PP by using a combination of cutting-edge technologies developed by Nextek. It does this by separating food-grade PP from other material and decontaminating the polymer to ensure compliance with food-grade standards in the UK, EU and the US.

Tech development
Following “outstanding” results of its innovative tracer-based sorting trials, Nextek recently started production trials of FGrPP, making over 60 different products from Nextloopp’s four grades of PPristine food compliant and INRT rPP grade resins.

The high-quality INRT Grade PP polymer has been developed specifically for packaging that requires no odor and no migration challenges.

“As we continue to build momentum, LyondellBasell’s expertise on delivering technologies that advance solutions to our world’s biggest challenges will be key,” asserts Kosior.

“As we continue to expand, we are entering an exciting phase building on our learnings and fine-tuning the radical and highly effective latest technical innovations to clean, sort and decontaminate post-consumer PP packaging.”

“We continue to work closely with our participants on demonstrating the compliance of the Nextloopp PPristine recycled PP resins with food-grade standards as we finalize our dossiers for the EFSA and USFDA compliance applications,” he concludes.

Last month, the Nextloopp recycling project successfully undertook the first full-scale packaging production trials using its PPristine food-grade resins.

Before the resins had been successfully converted into sample products, Nextek’s founder spoke to us about the trials and the project’s next steps.

By Natalie Schwertheim

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