Official opening of first commercial plant operating with the Enval technology

Enval Limited (Enval) the leading designer and constructor of decentralised, chemical recycling plants for flexible plastic packaging waste is delighted to announce that Greenback Recycling Technologies Ltd. (Greenback) has officially opened its first-of-a-kind recycling plant using the Enval™ technology.

The project, that Greenback is carrying out in partnership with Nestlé in Cuautla, Mexico uses Enval’s advanced recycling technology to turn hard-to-recycle plastics into pyrolytic oil or π-Oil™.

The plant which comprises one Enval module so far, will process initially the annual flexible plastic packaging waste generated by 250,000 people.  The product from the Enval™, low-emission recycling process, is recycled raw material that will be supplied to a petrochemical company (soon to be announced) to be used for new, food-grade plastic packaging.

“We are very proud to see for the first time an Enval™ module operating commercially with real post-consumer waste that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill, said Carlos Ludlow-Palafox, Enval’s CEO.”  It’s been many years in the making but all the experience that we’ve gained with our demonstration plant in the UK has been translated into a modular design that can quickly be deployed anywhere in the world. Our plan, together with Greenback, is to install many modules around the world to prevent thousands of tonnes of plastic waste going to landfill or, worse still, to our rivers and oceans”.

Indeed, with a global mission to reduce plastic waste, Greenback has already scaled out plans to install Enval™ modules in other parts of Mexico, Latin America, and other regions where the same challenges exist.

“I founded Greenback to reduce the environmental impact of the growing amounts of plastic packaging that is not recycled. We have created the first industrial, fully circular value chain for flexible post-consumer packaging. With our voluntary extended producer responsibility programme, the consumer goods companies contract Greenback to pay collectors and sorters to deliver previously worthless plastic waste in exchange for neutralisation certificates,” explained Philippe von Stauffenberg, CEO of Greenback during the inauguration event.

As an immediate solution to the environmental problem, Greenback collects the waste and turns it circular. With Enval’s™ breakthrough microwave-induced technology it transforms flexible plastics into pyrolysis oil, π-Oil™, which can be used for recycled content for new food packaging. The process also allows recycling of another valuable raw material, aluminium, when this is present in multi-layered flexible packaging.

Greenback also brings much needed transparency to the waste processing. With its proprietary eco2Veritas™ Circularity Platform it collects key data, such as origins and amounts of processed material. At the end, it delivers a certification on the neutralised waste, and the proof of origin and circularity for the output materials that are incorporated back into the economy.

Nestlé Mexico was the financing partner in the lighthouse project.

“We are proud of this partnership. We know that only by working together across the value chain, we can achieve a real circular economy that contributes to the health, safety and livelihoods of the local communities,” von Stauffenberg added.

“We are very proud to inaugurate this pyrolysis oil plant that will allow us to spearhead testing new methods to handle post-consumer urban waste in Mexico. It is a well-known fact that the success of packaging materials in the circular economy depends on having a solid collection, sorting and recycling infrastructure and the design of the packaging to be recycled. Today, as we partner with Greenback Recycling Technologies, we take another step in making this a reality,” said Fausto Costa, Executive President of Nestlé México.

Furthermore, Greenback also announced that they now have the support in the Mexico project from the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) in order to install a second Enval module in the same site.  AEPW focuses on advancing and scaling innovative solutions to achieve circularity of plastics worldwide.

“The Greenback team (using the Enval technology) has been able to conceptualise a modular solution that can be co-located with landfills and material recovery facilities to tackle complex and hard-to-recycle, flexible materials. It is the combination that is most exciting to us, as we are looking to find solutions that drive plastics circularity and have the potential to be replicated,” explained Natalie Stirling- Sanders, Chief Advisor, Head of Americas at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.

 

For additional information please contact:

Carlos Ludlow-Palafox

info@enval.com