We’re creating a circular economy. This process brings value to PET waste. In fact, with this approach PET should never become waste. It goes back into the economy as a valuable resource and drastically reduces the leakage of plastic waste into fragile ecosystems. It also incentivises plastic collection. If there’s value in discarded plastic, communities will want to collect it – all over the world.
At Unilever, we have committed that all our plastics packaging will be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 and we’re always looking out for technological breakthroughs to help us achieve that goal. When we were introduced to Ioniqa and learned more about their work, we realised how much potential it had.
My role was to bring more partners together, and create a collaborative climate to work on validating this technology. With giants on board like Unilever and Indorama, the world’s largest maker of PET resin and a longstanding supplier of ours, I had to make sure that we preserved and championed Ioniqa’s start-up approach.
The next step is scaling this technology up. Ioniqa is now introducing this newly validated technology to a 10,000-tonne capacity plant in the Netherlands. Once that’s in place, they’ll start supplying to Indorama, who will convert this Ioniqa product into PET resin to be used in our packaging.
We estimate that we can have circular PET ready for use by the third quarter of 2019. But we don’t want to keep it to ourselves. We believe this technology has the potential to revolutionise plastic recycling and transform the industry at large. So, we want to share what we’re doing with other companies who, like us, are keen to see an end to plastic waste and help in keeping the planet clean.
In my lifetime, I’d love for a time to come when much more plastic packaging is recycled than is wasted. For that to happen, we need to see momentous change in infrastructure around the world – not just in a few developed countries. I believe this is a very positive step in the right direction.