ROTOCYCLE - Novel use of hard to recycle plastics in rotomoulded applications

"Although rotomoulding is a well-established processing technique for the manufacture of products from polymers such as polyethylene, the use of post-consumer waste polyethylene is rare due to the problems associated with achieving good interfacial interaction between the base polymer and post-consumer waste polyethylene resulting in products that having poor mechanical properties. These low carbon footprint fillers could however be used to replace a high proportion of the virgin polymer in rotomoulded articles to enable good quality, eco-friendly commercially viable products to be manufactured reducing the the industries reliance on virgin polymers.

Enabling post-consumer waste polyethylene materials to be used in rotomoulding would increase the variety of materials that are available to Rotomoulders, demonstrating their effectiveness and open up a new and potentially massive market for recyclers to sell their recyclate into, absorbing the growing supply of post consumer waste plastics.

Our project will look to develop a full recycler to manufacturer supply chain for the rotomoulding industry, developing; recyclate grade polymers, the manufacturing processes to use them and confirming through industry standard tests they are suitable for sale into the market."