Since the start of the human coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic, an estimated 8.4 Mt of plastic waste has been generated by 193 countries(1). The majority of this waste ends-up in landfill or, in some areas, in the world's oceans. Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the UK’s largest manufacturer of PPE, Globus Group of Manchester, are working to tackle this issue through a two-year project, the results of which will enable the waste from manufacturing to be converted into pyrolysis oil. This oil can be refined into materials for the production of PPE, or for fuel.
An Assistant Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, Aimaro Sanna, says: “We will be working closely with our commercial partner Globus Group to develop a bespoke process that will be applied to PPE plastic waste that cannot currently be recycled mechanically due to various technological, economic or ecological reasons."
Initially, the partners will work to recycle the approximately 100 t of waste generated by Globus Group's PPE manufacturing operations each year; the equivalent to 10 kg of waste every hour. Sanna adds, however, that "our hope is that this new process will be adopted more widely. Many countries have been unable to process their plastic waste from PPE properly. Our ground-breaking research aims to address these challenges providing an exemplar technique for application globally.”
Since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, Globus Group has been producing one billion medical masks and 300 million respirators a year for healthcare trusts across the UK. For each medical mask it produces, it generates 7 g of waste material.
As part of the initiative, Globus Group has installed a thermal system at its Alpha Solway factory in Golborne, UK. Developed by Thermal Compaction Group (TCG) of Cardiff, UK, the machine has been designed to heat and compact polypropylene (PP) into large, re-usable blocks. These are then collected and processed, yielding raw materials that Globus Group can use to make new PPE, reducing waste by an estimated 85%.
Head of Quality at Globus Group, Pete Lee, says: "This technology will be a real game-changer in the way we tackle our PPE waste.”