Roofing Tiles from Low-Grade Plastic Streams: Product Design for Scalable Manufacturing

Circular11 is developing a roofing system out of a composite material that we synthesise from a mix of low-grade plastics that currently lack end-markets, and are therefore not recycled. This project is focussed on re-designing the mould in order to adapt the current prototype to a scalable manufacturing process.

We have already performed strength, thermal, and fire-testing on the material, and produce and sell products made out of it in the UK. It performs well enough to meet the increasing demand for building products with high recycled content, and we have received commercial intent from organisations like the Eden Project to supply their new-builds and retrofits with the tile.

However, prototype tiles are currently made using a simple narrow mould that would create backpressure issues if fitted to an industrial machine. More complex moulds require more precise datasets on the rheological behaviour of our material, so we will design a high-volume production mould that is specially adapted to our material.

This project is innovative because it is adapting industrial polymer production processes to create a high-value product out of waste streams that nobody else can use. Other companies have already demonstrated that there is market demand for roofing tiles made out of recycled plastic. However, these are currently made out of the same commercial-grade recyclate streams that other manufacturing sectors want, meaning that the price is driven up whilst the total volume of recycling in the system remains low. We are producing a product with similar performance, but which clearly drives additionality within the recycling sector itself.