Suez investigates how hard it is to recycle hard plastics

The Netherlands – Waste management company Suez has started a joint venture named SK Polymers together with Dutch recycler Kempenaars Recycling in a bid to find a ‘€˜clever’€™ way to find a sustainable answer to plastic waste that is literally hard to process.

The demand for plastics exceeds 50 million tonnes across Europe each year, Suez estimates. A big share of the material serves to create packaging and electronics, but not all of the products are easily shredded or dismantled at end-of-life stage.

‘This collaboration serves to enable large-scale sorting and recycling of hard plastics. Doing so will truly close the loop for plastics and stimulate the circular economy,’ says Eric Kempenaars, owner of Kempenaars Recycling, located in Roosendaal, the Netherlands.

Suez encounters a lot of plastics of variable sizes and rigidity when picking the recyclables from Dutch households and businesses.

‘Our participation in this joint venture is meant to strengthen our role in the plastics recycling chain as well as our showcase our determination to tackle resource efficiency,’ comments Paul Valster, director New Business at Suez.