Five minutes with Nigel Hunton, CEO of MBA Polymers…

We speak to our CEO, Nigel Hunton, about his ambitions for the business and the challenges facing the plastics recycling market in Europe.

What are some of MBA Polymers’ big achievements?

Our business in Austria has now been going for ten years, and is now a proven technology business model. Together with our JV partner, Müller-Guttenbrunn, we were recognised as Austria’s biggest e-waste shredder in 2013.

We’re delighted to have achieved global recognition for our work through multiple awards, such as the Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development and more recently Ethical Corp’s ‘Best SME’ award. We’re also lucky to have great support at a local level from our MP, John Mann, as well as interest from central government. Just this week, the UK’s Business Secretary (Dr. Vince Cable) visited our Worksop plant to hear more about our work and how we’re contributing towards a circular economy.

What are your ambitions for the business?

We’re on track to increase the processing capacity of our Worksop plant by 40% within the next few months. We plan to continue scaling up our UK business and use this model as a blueprint to create a large recycling business through further investments. For example, there are more than 250 million cars in the US, so there’s a big opportunity for us to recycle the plastic from the country’s end-of-life vehicles.

We’ve also strengthened our management team with highly experienced, business-focused people. That’s because fundamentally, we know that a sustainable business has to be profitable. Building the right business culture is integral to our success. I’m passionate about growing the company, and plan to build a strong engineering company that will have a great future. As we grow, we’ll remain committed to our core objective of diverting waste from landfill.

Tell us about some upcoming projects

As we develop, it’s vital that we continue to motivate our employees and engage with our customers to help them realise the benefits of using high quality recycled materials. Part of our focus on inspiring people internally and building a strong, stable workforce will see us step up our efforts on youth training.

We’ve recently begun a new youth training programme at our Worksop site, where we have 20 people aged 18-21, nearly 15% of our UK workforce. We’re helping our young employees to develop core skills for work and life. This follows a graduate programme we launched in 2013, and will see local school leavers, often from underprivileged backgrounds, gaining a foothold on the career ladder. In the future, we’d also like to introduce an apprenticeship programme.

We’re also doing some very interesting work with Jaguar Land Rover and Brunel University on innovative materials. We’ll be sharing more on this project in the coming months.

What are the challenges and opportunities for the European plastics recycling market, in your view?

Overall, European countries need to process more plastic waste in Europe. This means we need a higher customer demand for products with recycled content – the government could help with this by, for example, introducing 0% VAT for products using recycled plastic.

We’re seeing good levels of interest from the automotive industry and also the construction industry. What’s important about our operation here in Worksop is that due to our robust partnership with EMR, we have the scale and ability to deliver a steady stream of products, which is vital to supply chain continuity in major industries.

To learn more about MBA Polymers’ news and achievements, please visit our website.

Closing the loop on automotive plastics waste

The world’s top vehicle manufacturers are increasingly seeking to incorporate more recycled plastic in new cars as the light-weighting trend continues apace. In October, we heard that Nissan is adding light-coloured recycled plastic to the interior of its flagship ‘green’ car, the Nissan Leaf. Meanwhile, at the recent Plastics Recycling Europe Conference, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) explained that each New Range Rover contains 34.2kg of recycled plastic.

MBA’s Global Sourcing Manager, Paul Mayhew, comments: “Historically, the use of recycled plastic within the automotive sector has been restricted to ‘under the bonnet’ applications, where it can be as high as 60%. This recycled plastic tends to be sourced from post-industrial waste and includes off-cuts from the manufacturing process, rather than post-consumer plastic.”

With strict EU emissions targets in place for new vehicles, carmakers must try to reach average tailpipe emissions of 95g of CO2 per km by 2021 across an entire fleet of vehicles. As a result, they are constantly looking to substitute existing materials with lightweight alternatives, with major companies such as BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Renault also researching sustainable materials such as recycled plastic.

“This movement towards greener, lighter materials is pushing the automotive sector to explore the use of recycled plastics in more and more applications,” says Mayhew. “Nissan’s recent decision to include recycled plastic in the interior of the Leaf model shows that recycled plastic can be used in all parts of the vehicle.

“The next frontier for the automotive sector is to incorporate recycled plastics derived from end-of-life vehicles back into the manufacturing of new models.”

Paul Mayhew

As policymakers gear up to move the target for end-of-life vehicle recycling from 85% to 95% of the car next year, more and more shredding companies will seek to capture the plastics from this waste stream. They will turn to organisations such as MBA Polymers to convert the mixed plastic waste into a resource for future manufacturing. And ensuring a steady stream of high quality recycled plastics will be ever more important.

As part of our UK expansion plan to increase our capacity by 40% to 50,000 tonnes a year, MBA is already working to ensure strong product availability through our partnership with metal recycling specialist EMR. We took our first delivery of feedstock from EMR’s new recycling plant in March 2014, and are already working with carmakers to meet their requirements for sustainable materials.

“The automotive sector will need to work in partnership with automotive recyclers and compounders if they hope to replicate the success of other industries such as packaging and waste electronics,” says Mayhew. JLR, for example, is increasingly exploring opportunities for closed loop aluminium recycling through its ‘REALCAR’ project, while Nissan and Toyota have both run end-of-life vehicle recycling trials.

“If the recycling and automotive sectors collaborate successfully, yesterday’s waste can be transformed into raw materials for tomorrow’s cars,” Mayhew concludes.

For more information on how MBA Polymers can work with your company to deliver tailored, high performance recycled plastics, please contact us.

How can the UK become a world leader in recycling plastics?

MBA Polymers is calling for a shift in recycling policies to ensure recycling in the UK becomes an economically viable, sustainable enterprise. We explore the opportunity for the UK to become a world leader in the transformation of plastic waste into low carbon raw materials, and explain why government intervention is vital in making this happen.

Some 280 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually, yet only an estimated 10% is currently recycled. Despite advances in recycling technology, the UK still lags behind other European nations in recycling post-consumer plastic waste, with recycling rates standing at 20% in 2011.

Some 40% of household waste is now being recycled, according to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), yet in 2012 it was reported that 240,000 tonnes of plastic bottles were sent to landfill by UK households with access to kerbside plastic recycling collection. Meanwhile, WRAP estimates that the UK exported 684,000 tonnes of plastic waste to China in 2010 (where recycling methods can cause untold damage to the environment), the equivalent of 100 containers leaving its shores daily.

The current UK government aspires to be the country’s ‘greenest ever’ and has set tough recycling targets for the period to 2017. Plastic packaging (the most voluminous plastic waste culprit) will need to be recycled at a rate of 42% to meet these goals.

And yet, plastic is still not being recycled at the same rate as other materials. Despite being more valuable than steel on a price per weight basis, nearly 90% of steel is recycled, vs. 10% of plastic, as we have seen. In order to bridge this giant gap and put plastic recycling on the map, more must be done at a policy level to create the economic conditions needed for a flourishing domestic recycling market.

Our CEO Nigel Hunton and founder Mike Biddle recently presented MBA’s thoughts on the challenges and opportunities for plastics recycling in the UK to more than 100 politicians, environmental groups and business leaders at Westminster.

Mike outlined the scale of the plastics challenge and explained MBA Polymers’ work in delivering recycled plastic raw materials made from post-consumer waste plastics. He highlighted the sustainable business model that could help the UK become a world leader in recycling plastics waste and set the country on a path to a circular economy: using plastics waste effectively, saving energy and cost in the manufacturing process (recycled plastics can save up to 80% of CO2 compared to virgin polymer production from oil) and selling more sustainable products.

Nigel then called on MPs to introduce a 0% VAT incentive to companies selling products made from recycled materials. A detailed question and answer session followed, a summary of which can be found on our website.

By treating waste in the UK as a resource, and recycling it in a cost-effective, environmentally sound way, the country could: attract jobs and investment, reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and forge a reputation as an innovator in the waste treatment space, fuelling further technological innovations.

The technology does exist in the UK to recycle complex waste streams, but a lack of education and publication knowledge, a patchy response to EU legislation on waste, a reliance on landfill and incineration instead of ‘full recovery’ and still less than perfect collection rates, are slowing progress.

We believe the cost of recycling will decrease in the future with economies of scale and improved technologies, but we need regulatory assistance and other incentives, such as tax waivers, to help make this happen. We need an incentivised market, with legislation designed to encourage recycled content in products, and more rigorous auditing of overseas waste processors.

As the British Plastics Federation (BPF) outlines in its new proposal to catalyse a thriving market for recycled plastics in the UK, there is support from brand owners for high quality recycled materials, particular in an era where telling a ‘sustainability story’ is becoming more mainstream in brand marketing. To accelerate the volumes of recycled materials available to UK manufacturers, incentives are urgently needed, the organisation says.

For more on MBA Polymers’ views on incentivising markets for recycled plastics, see www.mbapolymers.com/home/qaa for our founder Mike Biddle’s responses to our Westminster audience’s questions.

UK Business Secretary visits MBA Polymers’ Worksop plant

MBA Polymers was delighted to welcome the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Dr Vince Cable, to our Worksop plant on 27th November 2014. The Business Secretary and his team were met by MBA CEO Nigel Hunton, who shared a presentation of our company’s story, before embarking on a tour around the plant.

During his visit, Dr Cable asked Nigel to describe MBA’s key strength. Nigel explained that our strength lies in separating plastic polymers from complex waste streams and giving them new life as materials for new products. And of course, we’re also helping to create a sustainable future for plastics.

MBA has spent 20 years developing its high tech processes to separate plastic waste, using a whole array of techniques, including separation by density, colour and electrostatic sorting. We process some 100,000 tonnes of feedstock globally each year, creating valuable raw materials for customers including Nespresso, Electrolux and HP. We continually invest in R&D and keep channelling our knowledge back into improving our processes and investigating how we can separate more types of plastic.

Dr Cable heard that the MBA Polymers Worksop plant is a real UK success story, on track to reach an annual processing capacity of 50,000 tonnes. We’re also helping our JV partner EMR to lead the world in recycling 99% of each end-of-life vehicle that comes through its doors, beating the EU’s 2015 target of 95%.

Nigel outlined the importance of working with customers to tailor the performance characteristics of our products to meet their exact needs, and highlighted an innovative materials collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover. Above all, he explained, receiving a steady stream of recyclable materials from EMR and our other JV partners is vital to ensuring continuity of supply for our customers.

Vince Cable at MBA Worksop recycling centre

The party toured the MBA Polymers plant, led by Plant Manager Richard Chambers, and got to see the key aspects of our operations first-hand, from the deliveries of automotive shredder residue (ASR) from EMR to how we check the quality of the final product, as explained by our Quality Manager, Peter Mackrell.

Commenting on his visit, Dr Cable said: “MBA Polymers is demonstrating how recycling can benefit both the economy and the environment. Whether it’s turning old cars into new cars and coffee machines or broken computers in to brand-new vacuum cleaners, it is transforming scrapheap rubbish in to the materials used in many household goods. A strong manufacturing sector lies at the heart of a sustainable economic recovery. The Government’s industrial strategy is giving business the confidence to invest – creating more high skilled, long term jobs in the UK.”

MBA Polymers Chief Executive, Nigel Hunton added: “We were very pleased that Dr Cable visited our facility. He was delighted to see the progress that we’re making on turning waste plastic into materials for new products – a tangible demonstration of the circular economy in action. We’re now working hard with customers to help them realise the commercial and environmental benefits of using recycled plastics in their products.”

Vince Cable in MBA's plastic recycling facility

Dr Cable’s MBA Polymers tour was part of a wider visit to technology businesses in Worksop and Lincoln, during which he announced £40m of funding for the industrial biotechnology sector.

For more information on MBA Polymers UK and our JV partnership with EMR, please visit our website.

Chris Jordan: illustrating the effects of mass consumption through art

You may well have seen one of Mike Biddle’s inspiring presentations and remember the amazing abstract image of thousands of interwoven grey lines…that prove to be plastic disposable cups, upon closer inspection. In fact, the image depicts one million cups, the same amount used by commercial flights in the US every six hours. This overwhelming image is one of the many poignant, ground-breaking works by Chris Jordan, an American artist who uses art to illustrate mass consumption and waste, and raise awareness of the social and environmental risks of Western consumer behaviour.

Seattle-based Jordan, who worked for ten years as a lawyer before becoming a photographer, uses photo images as the basis for his moving artwork. His large scale image ‘Ben Franklin’, a montage of 125,000 US $100 bills, represented the amount spent on the Iraq war every hour by the US government. Meanwhile, his ‘Cigarette Butts’ image shows 139,000 cigarette butts, equal to the number of cigarettes smoked and discarded every 15 seconds in the US.

Jordan’s project ‘Midway: Message from the Gyre’, which he began in 2009, features a series of photographs depicting the rotting carcasses of baby Laysan albatrosses, their stomachs filled with plastic. These birds nest on the Midway Atoll, some 2,000 miles from the nearest continent, and are fed plastic by their parents, who find floating plastic in the middle of the ocean and mistake it for food. As part of this project, Jordan is currently making the Midway Journey film.

Art is increasingly being used as a medium to convey serious messages about the impacts of human activity on the environment. The Plastic Garbage Project exhibition in Zürich, Switzerland, illustrates the volume of plastic waste discharged into the sea every second in a highly visual way. Designed to encourage people to think more carefully about reusing and recycling plastic waste, the exhibition is set to tour throughout Europe.

The FT / Coca-Cola Enterprises Future for Sustainability Summit

Pictures from the first Financial Times / Coca-Cola Enterprises Future for Sustainability Summit, where our founder Mike Biddle delivered the concluding ‘Call to Action’

» Read the full news story

Tiles Handout Banners
Summit floor at opening
Plastic plant
 Busy summit floor
Speakers from the back Question from audience Question from audience
Mike Biddle

Pictures from Financial Times Live

California becomes the first US state to ban plastic bags

California has become the first US state to officially ban non-biodegradable, single-use plastic bags. The State Governor, Jerry Brown, has just given the go-ahead to Senate Bill 270, signing it into law at the end of September. The new law will come into effect in January 2015, with grocery stores and pharmacies among the first to be affected. More durable, reusable plastic bags or paper bags will be sold at grocery stores, for a minimum of ten cents.

“I applaud Governor Brown for signing SB 270 into law,” said Senator Padilla, who co-authored the bill. “A throw-away society is not sustainable. This new law will greatly reduce the flow of billions of single-use plastic bags that litter our communities and harm our environment each year.”

“Littered plastic bags are a real blight on the landscape and often end up in the ocean, harming marine life,” agrees Nigel Hunton, CEO of MBA Polymers. “It’s important that policymakers take a strong stance on limiting their use in order to protect the environment and conserve natural resources.”

Similar legislation exists in 100 Californian municipalities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles. The new law will effectively consolidate this approach, creating a uniform, statewide position on plastic bags.

Many plastic bag and paper bag producers had opposed the bill, saying it would harm jobs and serve as a tax on consumers. In contrast, the California Grocers Association and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), a union that represents grocery workers, both supported it. UFCW says it wants the money currently spent on plastic bags to be used for worker training and food safety initiatives.

To help pave the way for manufactures to shift toward producing reusable bags, the new legislation makes provision for some $2m in loans. Packaging company Command Packaging has already made a head start by retooling some of its machines in preparation for the ban, moving to create reusable plastic bags from recycled agricultural film used for wrapping crops.

Elsewhere in the US, bans are in place in Seattle and Portland, as well as most counties in Hawaii. In Europe, Italy passed a law banning non-biodegradable plastic bans in 2013. California has already proved its progressive stance on waste, with San Francisco banning the sale of plastic bottled water in city-owned properties and outdoor spaces earlier this year. The new plastic bag ban will be another step forward in the state’s sustainability journey.

To learn more about how plastic can be recycled into raw materials, please visit the MBA Polymers website.

MBA Polymers transfers global R&D operation to the UK

Leading plastics recycler MBA Polymers is moving its global R&D operation and headquarters to Worksop, UK. The company also plans to expand the processing capacity of its existing 12,000 m2 Worksop processing plant from 60,000 tonnes to 80,000 tonnes per year by mid-2014. The firm will close its existing R&D facility in Richmond, California, but aims to build full processing plants in the US in the future.

The MBA Polymers Worksop plant, one of the largest and most advanced plastics recycling sites worldwide, is run jointly with European Metal Recycling (EMR), a metal recycling specialist that supplies the company with a steady stream of post-consumer waste. The plant focuses primarily on recovering mixed plastics from shredder residue from end-of-life cars.

Speaking to Plastics News magazine in July 2013, CEO Mike Biddle commented: “The UK is the centre of our concentration today,” Biddle said. “Moving our R&D facilities to Worksop is strategic – Europe is ahead of the game when it comes to recycling plastics. I also intend for the US be a major part of our business in the coming years.”

Biddle said that the decision to expand the company’s US business was prompted by three key factors:

  • The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given a green light to mining plastics from the 4.5 million tonnes of auto shredder residue generated annually in the US. That translates to about 680,000 to 907,000 tonnes of plastic.
  • Electronics recycling is also continuing to grow in the US, despite a lack of specific legislation.
  • More than 29 million tonnes of plastics are discarded in US municipal solid waste streams annually, estimates the EPA, meaning there is a significant opportunity for more recycling to take place. Single-stream municipal recycling programmes and mixed recycling are already starting to prove popular.

Discussing the move, he commented:  “Moving our R&D facilities to Worksop is strategic; Europe is ahead of the game when it comes to recycling plastics, and we’re confident that this new R&D facility is going to help us increase our foothold in the European market.

“Meanwhile, we’ll be growing our US operation. Though recycling plastics is still a relatively new concept, the growth of MBA shows that there’s a real appetite for these products and we simply need more space if we’re to meet demand for the plastics we produce.”

UK government invites consumers to take the plastic pledge

Consumers in the UK are being encouraged to take a pledge to recycle one more plastic bottle per week, as the British government gears up to meet its rigorous plastic recycling targets.

The new Pledge 4 Plastics campaign begins this September and is being supported by major businesses including Coca-Cola Enterprises, Marks & Spencer, Unilever, Nestlé and Veolia, as well as organisations such as Plastics Europe, WRAP and the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Local councils are also being encouraged to get involved. Overall, the government aims to double the volume of plastic packaging recycled by 2017 and reach a recycling rate of 42% (1.2m tonnes of plastic).

Run by plastics recycling organisation Recoup, Pledge 4 Plastics will seek to encourage consumers to pledge their support online, committing to recycle more plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays in the home. The primary focus will be on bottles, as almost all UK councils run kerbside collections for plastic bottles (versus 60% for pots, tubs and trays). The first thousand people to pledge are being offered the chance to win a limited edition mobile phone cover designed by TV presenter and designer Abigail Ahern and made from 80% plastic bottles.

Some 2.5m tonnes of plastic packaging are currently used in the UK each year, estimates Recoup, including 33m plastic bottles per day. While 7bn plastic bottles were collected from UK homes for recycling in 2012, 5bn were sent to landfill, it says, illustrating the significant potential to boost recycling rates.

“It’s always encouraging to see new consumer-focused campaigns raising awareness of the need to recycle plastic waste,” says Nigel Hunton, MBA Polymers’ CEO. “Importantly, Pledge 4 Plastics is opening people’s eyes to the new products that can be made from recycled plastic and helping to shed a light on what happens to an empty plastic bottle once it’s collected for recycling. Having a fuller picture of the story could really help to boost people’s understanding of why recycling is important.”

To find out more about using MBA Polymer’s high quality recycled plastics in new products, please contact us. For more information on the Pledge 4 Plastics campaign, click here.

How is China’s ‘Green Fence’ affecting the global recycling trade?

China’s ‘Operation Green Fence’ saw 55 scrap transactions and 7,600 tonnes of materials rejected in its first three months, according to a group of expert panellists including our own Mike Biddle, who took part in the Society of the Plastics Industry’s (SPI) recent ‘Green Fence’ webinar. The session explored the commercial effects of the legislation for recyclers in China and the US, and how recyclers are responding.

‘Operation Green Fence’ was introduced back in February 2013 to help stem the flow of contaminated, poor quality scrap from the US and Europe. China’s demand for low-cost recycled raw materials to fuel its colossal manufacturing industry had, until then, sparked a thriving global trade in scrap materials, with shipments from the US arriving thick and fast.

Chinese regulations had long banned excessive levels of contamination in imports of recyclables, but these had rarely been enforced. By forcing foreign companies to increase the quality of the waste they sell to China, the Chinese government aims to reduce the environmental damage being caused by hundreds of small scale Chinese firms recycling contaminated recyclables using unsound techniques that pollute the country’s waterways and damage air quality.

The ten-month ‘Green Fence’ initiative, due to end in November 2013, has set a limit of 1.5% of ‘allowable’ contaminant in each bale of imported recyclables. It includes random inspections of all forms of scrap, including metal, plastics, textiles, rubber and recovered paper materials.

So, how have the new legislation affected recyclers in China and the US?

The panellists indicated that far lower volumes of plastic scrap are currently being shipped to China from the US, and there is also widespread confusion as to whether Chinese customs or China Certification and Inspection Group (CCIC) are in charge. Apparently, there are reports of CCIC-approved containers being rejected by customs. Meanwhile, with some recyclable materials now in shorter supply, prices for these materials are rising, causing a financial strain for Chinese recyclers.

Challenges and opportunities for recycling America’s waste

Scrap was America’s top export to China by value in 2011 – worth $11.3 billion, according to US trade figures. In the same year, the US exported two-thirds of its 23 million tonnes of scrap to China, says the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). A lack of sufficient recycling facilities in the US to process the country’s recyclable waste and the lost cost of shipping e-waste to China had both favoured this approach.

Now, with stricter environmental laws being enforced in China, US recyclers have an opportunity to either sort recyclables more carefully, or recycle more material in the US, or both. This will require a wave of innovation and investment in recycling technology, such as MBA Polymers’ own world-leading plastics recycling techniques.

There is some evidence to suggest that recyclers in the US are already running recyclable waste through second sorting step (in the shape of optical sorters) in response to the new legislation. However, in the short term, some traders are also selling scrap to countries including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where it is either reprocessed or simply sorted and cleaned to the new Chinese standards and then shipped on to China. In the worst case scenario, mixed paper and plastics waste is being sent to landfill as it cannot be sold to Chinese recyclers.

“China’s Green Fence offers a real opportunity to the US government and recycling industry to step up its efforts on recycling and catalyse a strong domestic recycling market in the US,” says Biddle. “In the long term, creating a sustainable recycling market at home will improve recycling rates, create jobs and boost the US economy.”