Next frontier for plastic recycling

Plastic collection and recycling is now commonplace for ports around the world and as countries like China and Malaysia have recently tightened their rules on plastic imports from Europe and elsewhere in the world, the ability to recycle plastic locally is more important than ever.

The ports sector is increasingly seeing more focus on addressing the whole life cycle of plastics within the circular economy concept. Demonstrating the way ports are evolving their plastic waste management strategies is the Port of Amsterdam, which set up its circular and renewable industry department following the start of the 2008 financial crisis, when it was looking for new forms of business and saw an opportunity to further integrate sustainability into its development plans.

James Hallworth, commercial manager of the circular and renewable industry department at the Port of Amsterdam, explains: “What became apparent was the circular economy was really starting to take off . We were seeing a lot of new initiatives and a lot of potential for the port and so we started looking into this innovative and promising new branch, that’s given us a little bit of a head start. Plastic recycling has really been gaining traction in the last couple of years.”

Prodock innovation hub

A key catalyst for the Port of Amsterdam’s circular economy and renewables work was the launch of its Prodock innovation hub in 2016, the same year legislation was passed to enable sea-going vessels visiting the port to dispose of their plastic waste without paying a fee.

Prodock was set up to enable startups and scaleups to test their products and services, taking them from lab scale through the demo phase and onto full scale commercial businesses. 17 young companies are currently active in the hub, which has brought in a lot of new circular economy activity, helped develop new bio-based processes and pushed the energy transition at the port, says Mr Hallworth.

Impact Hub Amsterdam’s Business Model Challenge (BMC) plastics edition, supported by the Accenture and the Port of Amsterdam, was announced in March 2019 to offer participants the opportunity to turn plastic waste solution ideas into successful start-ups.

The 11 participants in the incubator programme included design studio Polimeer, which developed Polimarble, a high-end, marble-like material made from single use waste plastic bags and plastic film for use in interior, architectural, and product design. The company is now growing and developing at Prodock.

“The Impact Hub programme was quite early stage so there were a lot of very young start-ups taking part, but it led to some very interesting developments,” says Mr Hallworth.

Port of Partnerships

Partnerships are important to the Port of Amsterdam. Three of its partner organisations include Integrated Green Energy (IGE) Solutions, Plastic Recycling Amsterdam and Plastic Whale.

In June 2018, Australia-headquartered IGE Solutions drove the first pile for its plant designed to transform end of life non-recyclable plastics into clean fuels at the port. The project was first established by Dutch company Bin2Barrel Holding, which the port already had a 10% stake in. Following IGE Solutions’ acquisition of Bin2Barrel Holding, the latter is now constructing the Amsterdam plant as IGE Solutions Amsterdam BV.

IGE Solutions’ plant will soon be running and aims to turn 33,000 metric tonnes of non-recyclable plastic from Amsterdam into 35m litres of clean fuel annually to prevent 57,000 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.

The plant uses pyrolysis technology in producing Marine fuel, Marine Diesel Oil (MDO) and Road-Ready Transport Fuels such as EN590 (Road Ready Diesel) and EN228 (Road Ready Petrol) to be sold to companies at the port for ships and land transport. These Road-Ready Transport Fuels are made without further refinement, blending or processing of the plastics used. The goal of IGE Solutions Amsterdam BV is to produce Naphta, the raw material for producing plastics, and this becoming a fully circular process in the plastic industry.

Plastic Recycling Amsterdam

A company that recycles plastic ‘post consumer’ packaging materials is also new to the port. Plastic Recycling Amsterdam, a collaboration between TU Delft, Umincorp, and Milieu Service Nederland, has been operating since 2019.

The presence of Plastic Recycling Amsterdam’s factory in the city is particularly valuable as recycling in Amsterdam is challenging due to compact living conditions which make separation of recyclables at source difficult. The factory uses Magnetic Density Separation (MDS) technology, designed to make recycling mixed plastic waste flows both more efficient and provide increased (97-99%) purity recyclate material.

Processing post-consumer packaging plastic from the Amsterdam and Rotterdam areas involves shredding the plastic (‘liberation’) and putting it through an industrial washing process spanning a 100m area. Machinery and MDS technology developed by Umincorp then sort the different types of plastic by their weight when suspended in magnetic liquid.

The factory is situated next to the electricity-generating waste to energy plant owned by local government, enabling mixed plastic at the plant to be separated from other waste and quickly handed over. “Plastic Recycling Amsterdam is heading towards full operational capacity now, to processes 15,000t a year,” says Mr Hallworth.

Creating waste value

Plastic Whale was set up to create economic value out of a problematic waste flow. It utilises the tourism trade to take tourists fishing for plastic in Amsterdam’s canals. Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is recycled from the plastic collected from the waterways and used to make Plastic Whale’s boats (sloops).Plastics collected are also used to make foam sheets, that are in turn used to make wind turbine blades. The port has helped Plastic Whale’s activities by providing a large warehouse where the organisation can store all the rubbish it fished from the canals.

Currently, the port is working with the local water authority and the government to clean the banks of the North Sea Canal, which provides access to the port area from the sea locks in IJmuiden. High winds in the area mean plastic not collected by Plastic Whale ends up caught on the rocks on the banks, but a solution is in place explains Mr Hallworth. “The three organisations have a vessel with an industrial vacuum cleaner device onboard which sucks all the plastic and debris out of the rocks so it can be recycled.”

What next?

There has been progress in tackling the culture of plastic pollution in the Netherlands, however it is important to push forward with industry efforts, says Mr Hallworth. “Steps have been taken to reduce or ban single use plastics which is really good. There is a lot of movement in the Netherlands to try and stop producing these items, but we really need to get to a point where we’re undertaking industrial-scale fully circular recycling. Getting waste collected efficiently, making sure as little as possible is disappearing into the incinerators and into nature, plus bringing together different processing techniques, are key.”

Despite the number and variety of plastic recycling initiatives being carried out at the port, there is still a lot of plastic which comes through the port that doesn’t get recycled because it’s not yet practical or possible to recycle everything, admits Mr Hallworth.

A substantial amount of plastic is still disappearing into the waste to energy plant, but the port needs more capacity for plastic recycling. It hopes to have the IGE Solutions Amsterdam pyrolysis plant running at the beginning of 2021. “This is a system where you put the plastic in a chamber, you heat it with high temperature and high pressure without any oxygen, so it doesn’t burn but the molecular chains break up.” The plastic can be turned it into diesel or Naphtha, which can be used to make new plastics. Foils and films will be the recyclable feedstock for this process.

In addition to the existing recycling initiatives at the port, Mr Hallworth believes what is needed next is the development of different plants using pyrolysis, depolymerisation and solvalysis chemical recycling techniques.“These would, collectively, be able to take any type of plastic, be it post-consumer or post-industrial, bring it to the port and get it recycled, not downcycle, and if possible, upcycled. That’s the holy grail when it comes to circularity in the plastic ecosystem”