Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111
Your industry news - first
The original and best - for over 20 years!
We strongly recommend viewing Cleanzine full size in your web browser. Click our masthead above to visit our website version.
Clean Planet Energy secures supply agreement with plastics recycling giant, KW Plastics
Clean Planet Energy's North American division has announced a long term agreement with one of the world's largest recyclers of HDPE and PP rigid plastic, KW Plastics.
The agreement will provide plastic scrap to Clean Planet's new ecoPlant, to be built in Alabama, and means that up to 20,000 tons of plastic residue generated at the current KW Plastics facility in Alabama will be turned into reusable circular products, rather than being sent to landfill.
The circular products produced at a Clean Planet ecoPlant can either be circular petrochemical feedstocks (used to generate new plastics), or ultra-low sulphur fuels (used to lower greenhouse gas emissions if used as a replacement to fossil fuels).
In November 2021, Clean Planet Energy, a UK based green-tech company, announced the formation of a US-based joint venture with Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure to develop Clean Planet Energy USA ecoPlants across key markets in North America. Starting in New Jersey, the joint venture sought to advance multiple additional projects with agreements in place for plastic supply in Texas, Florida, the Dominican Republic and other key North American markets.
Based in Alabama, KW Plastics accepts rigid plastics from across the US and recycles it into a wide range of polyethylene and polypropylene recycled resins for multiple industries including personal care, automotive, agriculture, construction and flexible packaging applications. The KW Facilities can process more than 500 million pounds (250,000 tons) of rigid plastic per annum.
Despite the advanced nature of KW Plastic's facilities, not all of the rigid plastic received into the KW Facility can be mechanically processed into recycled materials, meaning a proportion of the material must be landfilled. Integrating Clean Planet Energy's ecoPlant facility into the downstream of the KW process adds green-catalytic and hydrogen processing capabilities, enabling almost all material received into the KW Facility from US households to now be recycled.
It is believed that by locating Clean Planet Energy's Alabama facility in proximity to KW Plastics, it will create a highly efficient, low landfill, supply chain for plastic recycling, and significantly stop plastics entering landfill, or potentially our oceans.
"Clean Planet's vision for North America is to integrate our advanced ecoPlant technology into industries that can support the removal of plastics entering landfill across the US,” says David Nazha, CEO of Clean Planet Energy's North American division.” The team at KW Plastics share our vision of the reduction of plastics entering landfill, and working with the world's largest plastics recycler is a significant step in this journey. We are very excited about the possibilities for both companies, and the continued protection of the environment achieved by removing waste-plastics."
Scott Saunders, the general manager of KW Plastics, joined KW as a director of raw material procurement in 1994. "Since 1981, KW has been a pioneer in the revolution of plastics recycling industry,” he says. “We have developed processes to handle a wide range of rigid plastics allowing us to work with MRF (Material recovery facility) operators to greatly increase the amount of HDPE and PP containers removed from curb-side stream. Working with Clean Planet Energy at our headquarters in Troy, Alabama, is an exciting way to continue this journey, now knowing the even harder to reach plastics can be put back into use."
Clean Planet Energy, in collaboration with KW Plastics, is currently pushing forward the planning requirements to begin construction of Clean Planet's first ecoPlant in Alabama.
13th October 2022