MBA Polymers has just launched a new Change.org petition to seek consumer support for recycled plastics. The petition asks the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to incentivise manufacturers to specify recycled plastics more often, in keeping with circular economy thinking.

“We know that creating demand for secondary raw materials is very important in terms of creating the right economic conditions for plastics recycling to flourish,” says Mike Biddle, founder, MBA Polymers. “By raising awareness of the issue more widely and seeking consumer support, we hope to give the UK government more ammunition to incentivise manufacturers to increase their use of recycled plastics.”

The new petition explains that using more recycled plastics in manufacturing is a win-win situation for the UK economy and the environment. It takes 75% less energy to make a plastic bottle from recycled plastic compared to using brand new raw materials, for instance. Additionally, we highlight that there’s a multitude of uses for recycled plastic and that some companies are already benefitting by using more secondary raw materials.

“The UK stands to become a world leader in sustainable design and manufacturing, and using more recycled materials could play a decisive part in this,” concludes Biddle.

To read or sign up to our petition, please visit [TBC].

MBA’s Sales Director, Gary Claypole, will be speaking at this year’s Plastics Recycling Conference in Milan, Italy, on 29th October 2014. Gary will be presenting during the ‘Plastics Recycling Dynamics’ session and will explore the way forward for a flourishing plastics recycling market in Europe.

Gary will join a host of international plastics recycling experts at this year’s conference, as companies from across the industry come together to discuss the next steps for plastics recycling in Europe and identify opportunities for collaboration. The conference takes place over two days and topics will include resource efficiency, designing for recycling, creating circular models for packaging and balancing plastics recycling and waste to energy, as well as the outlook for plastics recycling post China’s ‘Green Fence’.

To arrange to speak with Gary at the conference, please contact us. To see the full conference programme, please click here.

MBA’s Mike Biddle has been named among the world’s ‘Champions of Recycling’ by JASON Learning, a not-for-profit educational organisation part-managed by the National Geographic Society. JASON aims to inspire and educate children around the world to engage with science through multimedia teaching.

Entitled ‘Tools for a Lifetime’, the JASON article describes how Biddle chose his career because he ‘hated waste’ and wanted to understand how he could make useful materials from plastic waste. While most people simply get rid of things they don’t want anymore, Biddle tries to recapture them, he says.

The article sets the scene by explaining that only about 10% of plastic waste is recycled, compared to 90% of metals, due to the complexity of separating different types of plastic. It also touches on the issue of recyclable waste being shipped overseas, highlighting that we don’t really know if it’s been recycled efficiently or whether some of it has been burned, landfilled or dumped in the ocean.

Biddle progressed from traditional polymer research to establishing MBA Polymers in his home garage. His aim was to create a highly efficient and economical means of separating post-consumer plastic waste in order for it to be reused as high quality recycled plastic. From there, he developed a patented series of techniques for plastics separation and has built a global business processing more than 150k tonnes of plastic waste per year.

He sees his 20 years in business as one of constant problem solving. “You solve one problem, and move on to the next one,” Biddle tells JASON, explaining that studying maths and science equipped him with the right tools to understand how the world works and tackle these challenges. “The best thing that ever happened to me was learning maths and science at school,” he says. “It wasn’t always fun or easy but it has paid huge dividends.”

Biddle refers to a school project completed by his daughter, whereby she designed a recycling programme for her school and MBA Polymers showed the children how the plastic waste was recycled.

He concludes by saying that he’s still excited about what he does: “If you have the ability to solve these problems, you’ll never stop having fun because you’re always learning new things.”

To read the JASON Learning article, please click here.

The UK has entered the top ten environmental sustainability performers in the Yale University Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI) rankings. It has also been named among Europe’s top ten recycling nations in a recent survey, although still has a fair way to go on this front, lagging 25% behind the leader, Switzerland.

The annual Yale EPI snapshot is based on performance over the last decade together with a current performance snapshot. The key areas considered are ‘environmental health’ (water, air pollution, environmental burden of disease) and ‘ecosystem vitality’ (climate change, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, biodiversity and habitat, air pollution, water). Many factors are taken into consideration, ranging from CO2 emissions to water quality to pesticide regulations.

The UK has been ranked in joint ninth place with Sweden, at 68.82. The top three countries are Switzerland (76.69), Latvia (70.37) and Norway (69.92). Interestingly, the UK performs best in the water and air pollution sections of the ‘environmental health’ category. It also performs well in the biodiversity and habitat section under ‘ecosystem vitality’. Conversely, areas identified as in need of attention are climate change and the effect of water use on ecosystems.

Recycling-wise, the UK has a national recycling rate of 39% for municipal solid waste (MSW), according to research conducted by bin retailer RecyclingBins.co.uk.

The EPI rankings system was developed by Yale and Columbia Universities in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the European Commission. To see the full global performance snapshot, please click here. For a breakdown of MSW recycling rates, please see this infographic.

Photo credit: Caroline Seidel, Plastics News ©

This year’s K was smaller in size than the original K-Show, with less than half of the expected 200,000 visitors. However, design innovation was certainly in evidence, with many companies developing interesting and quirky ways to create more sustainable plastics.

Some 3,200 exhibitors attended – including MBA Polymers – from 59 countries. Machinery and equipment suppliers dominated the show, followed by materials producers and producers of semi-finished goods, reinforced plastics and technical parts. Germany was the best represented country, with German plastics and rubber companies accounting for 40% of the exhibition floor space.

According to Werner Mathias Dornscheidt, chairman of exhibition centre Messe Düsseldorf, K is still a vital information platform for designers and production professionals from many industries, including automotive, consumer goods, electrical/electronic, aerospace and construction.

“For them, the K is a must, with producers of plastics and rubber machinery, processing companies, scientific and competence centres all setting research and development yardsticks,” he said.

Among the many companies exhibiting at the show, BASF highlighted its reorganised plastics business with a host of new materials and applications across the engineering resins spectrum. The changes will help BASF to expand its share of the automotive market, as well up-and-coming sectors such as wind power and bioplastics, board Vice Chairman Martin Brudermüller said.

ExxonMobil Chemical collaborated with 13 machinery firms at K to demonstrate its added-value polymer technology, strong application development and the optimisation of processing conditions, ExxonMobil Chemical VP John Verity said.

German company Polysecure demonstrated a new way to mark products (to protect against counterfeiting), using tiny particles blended in a masterbatch of plastics, while chassis, suspension and powertrain supplier ZF Friedrichshafen showcased its work in using rubber and plastics to reduce noise, vibration and harshness.

MBA Polymers at K

MBA Polymers’ Roger Hynes – Commercial Director, enjoyed a busy few days at the K Show, meeting companies from a variety of different sectors and explaining the many different applications of our product. As our Sales Manager Neil Croucher explains in this video, MBA has a unique proposition. Our products compete effectively with virgin raw materials by offering a high level of quality and consistency.

We manufacture recycled plastic pellets for a wide range of uses, including seed trays and plant pots to filters for the automotive industry. The opportunities are almost limitless. Importantly, we agree technical specifications in advance with our customers, sometimes modifying the characteristics of the plastic to meet their precise needs.

As Neil explains, the scale of our operation and our successful partnership with EMR are helping us to lead the marketplace for post-consumer recycled plastics.

Design innovation

K 2013 acknowledged the increasingly important role of design by hosting the Design Chain conference for the first time. It addressed the commercial world of medical, automotive and appliance design and its use of plastics, and featured speakers from BMW and Philips.

Plastic innovations took many forms at the show, reports Plastic and Rubber Weekly. In one quirky example, a US company is extracting protein from chicken feathers, the by-product of 6m chickens slaughtered daily for the food industry in North America.

Interestingly, industrial designers are reaching further back into the product development cycle and are developing plastics themselves as well as new methods to form them. One such example is designer Jeongwon Ji’s ‘Crustic’ investigation. Exploring the potential for new alternatives to petroleum-based plastics in electronics production, Ji investigated the use of a bio-plastic made from mitten crab (a Chinese pest). Ji has also perfected a chemical-free non-toxic ‘slow production’ method that may improve the well-being of electronics manufacturing workers.

For more information on the K-Show, click here.