Greenstar cleans up as war on waste escalates

By Chris Tighe
Published: April 13 2009 03:00

The rising tide of plastic packaging makes many consumers uneasy as they fill their supermarket trolleys with goods mounted on plastic trays and liquids stored in plastic bottles.
But the innovative efforts of Teesside plastics recycling pioneer Greenstar WES, the world's first commercial producer of food grade recycled plastic, should go some way to tackle concerns about environmental pollution and waste.
Each month, Greenstar WES's plant at the Wilton International site near Redcar, North Yorkshire, receives up to 2,000 tonnes of baled plastics, much of it domestic waste collected from households. The company was the first in the world to develop and apply the technology to convert plastic milk bottles from consumers' bins into clean, food-grade, high-density polyethylene (r-HDPE) flakes.
It was also the first UK processor capable of recycling metallised crisp packets; it now handles 2,000 tonnes of them annually, turning them into multicoloured plastic pellets for making paint trays and plant pots.
Its r-HDPE flakes are supplied to packaging manufacturers, including Nampak, Sharp Interpack and Linpac Packaging for use in applications including bottles and food trays for chickens and mushrooms. In 2009 it expects to supply 8,000 tonnes of food-grade recycled plastic to British, Belgian, Italian, French and Dutch manufacturers. About 60 per cent goes to Nampak, which has been keen to source more r-HDPE from within the UK.
Consumers may not realise when they buy Marks and Spencer's organic milk that one 10th of the plastic used for bottles has been on a shop shelf before. Nampak, which describes Greenstar WES as a vital piece of the jigsaw in getting bottles including r-HDPE accepted and on retailers' shelves, eventually hopes to use 30 per cent recycled content in its bottles.
Sharp Interpack uses the r-HDPE flakes for its food trays. Andrew Copson, managing director, says: "Environmental responsibilities won't go away and so initiatives like food-grade recycled plastics are a fundamental game-changer."
Having started out during the early 1990s as Waste Exchange Services, WES's management in 2007 sold 75 per cent to Greenstar UK, one of the country's biggest recycling-led waste management companies.
Greenstar WES innovations include the processing of heavily printed plastic film, the conversion of waste plastics from car scrap and specialist pipes and of low-grade plastics like dirty polystyrene. Its total annual processing capacity is 25,000 tonnes of plastics, but it intends to increase volumes.
"We're always playing with plastic and soon hope to have some new products to [test]," says James Donaldson, founder and managing director. "Plastic is fantastic, especially when it's recycled."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009