Tackling the global plastic waste issue, by upcycling no value streams into 100% virgin material and enabling new plastic circular economy

ended

72 million tons of PET (the second most used plastic polymer) are produced each year from petroleum refining. The same year, 53 million tons of waste PET is landfilled, incinerated or floats into seas and oceans. Gr3n proposes a completely new way to break this vicious circle and create plastic from waste. The problem with PET is that it is currently “reused” and not “recycled”, as only transparent and pale bottles are mechanically treated to be partly added to virgin PET in the production of plastic bottles and trays. All other PET derived products, as waste polyester textiles and coloured plastics are almost worthless to the market and end up polluting the environment. Our vision is to enable the first truly circular approach to PET recycling, empowered by our patented technology able to break any kind of PET into its two main building blocks, for creating new PET plastics infinitely and cost-effectively. Through a 15,000 tons/year gr3n plant we do expect to collect, process and address the need of virgin plastics and polyester of a metropolitan area, thus triggering a true circular approach to plastic recycling. The cPET project is focused on validating the sustainability of creating a European distributed network of gr3n plants localized in each urban area, able to treat any PET-derived waste and produce new plastic for local consumption. This SME Instrument innovation project aims to tear down all the technical, economic, regulatory and logistics/organizational risks to scale up the initial 1,000 tons/year demonstrator to a full-fledged industrial plant. This will be achieved through a real demonstration is a small urban area, where a circular approach to PET recycling will be really tested, streamlining the logistics and measuring the economic, environmental and societal benefits before proceeding with a global commercialization strategy.