Sector: Consumer goods
Tools and techniques: Resource Efficiency
Abstract
Northern Ireland based eco-company Irish Polymers began trading seven years ago and collected plastic bottles for recycling from 12 sites spread across three local council areas. The operation has expanded across around 200 sites spread across 16 councils in the North of Ireland and six councils in the South.
Processes: the founders of the company spotted a gap in the market for the provision of a plastic bottle recycling service within Northern Ireland. They had initially entered the business by importing reprocessed plastic pellets from France to sell to local producers of land drainage pipe. These pellets started life as plastic milk cartons and were recycled by French re-processors.
Their ultimate goal at that time was to set up a plastics reprocessing plant based on the European model but processing post-consumer plastic bottles from the Irish waste stream as opposed to importing the material. It was necessary for Irish Polymers to initiate a plastic bottle collection system to supply the raw materials.
The volume of material coming through the system began to increase dramatically. This was compounded by the fact that other local councils were keen to enlist their services to respond to the demand from the public for plastic bottle recycling to be introduced within their areas.
Increasing pressure from Europe for local government to increase recycling targets across all materials - particularly plastics - underpinned by public pressure on local councils to tackle the growing problem of plastic bottle pollution has contributed to the success of the business. However, despite the environmental considerations, the success of the plastic bottle recycling programme is based primarily on cost savings.
Impact:
1250 tonnes of mixed plastic bottles are processed and the products sold worldwide
Irish Polymers has seen its turnover grow from just £10,102 to year end 1999 up to £360,000 to year end 2004 with profitability increased ten fold
This increasing use of recycled feedstock material provides many manufacturers with raw material cost savings (approx 30%) and performance characteristics every bit as good as virgin material with the demand for good quality recycled material currently outstripping supply
Virtually zero waste production as even the 3-5% of waste material coming through the bottle stream can be recycled at a different plant and yield a positive financial value