Commercial-scale demonstration of RT7000 distributed chemical recycling machine converting plastic packaging waste into oil that can be used as raw material for making new plastics.

Plastic is a material with many beneficial applications; global plastic production reached 388Mt in 2017 and is expected to surpass 1Bt by 2050\. Presently 45% of new plastics are used in short life cycle, single use applications (McKinsey) and just 12% of end-of-life plastic is recycled. Recycling rates are forecast not to exceed 60% by 2050\. At current rates of growth, it is predicted that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish (Ellen MacArthur, 2016).

Recycling Technologies Ltd (RT) has developed an innovative process that uses thermal cracking to recycle a wide range of plastic waste that cannot be recycled by conventional methods. The process is incorporated into a modular machine, the RT7000, designed to process 7000tpa of hard-to-recycle mixed plastic waste, producing 5200tpa of a new valuable hydrocarbon oil, Plaxx(r), which has multiple uses including replacing crude oil in plastics production, allowing plastic to be recycled an unlimited number of times.

RT's long-term aim is to process mixed plastic waste regardless of type, contaminant or origin and create a circular economy solution. Working together with Neste, the world's leading provider of renewable diesel and jet fuel and the 3rd most sustainable company on the Global 100 list, and Unilever, one the largest fast-moving consumer goods companies in the world, the project will demonstrate how hard-to-recycle plastics (HTRPs) can be recycled into feedstock for virgin-quality packaging, thereby showing that plastic production can be a circular process. The project will:

* Establish a collection network for HTRPs
* Build an RT7000 machine in Scotland by March 2021 with a capacity of 7,000 tonnes per year (roughly 10% of Scotland's existing recycling capacity) of HTRPs
* Take the output from the refining process and "road map" how the Plaxx can be returned to the market as a feedstock for new, virgin quality recycled packaging material.

This project is critical because plastic is a highly versatile and valuable material with many important applications (prolonging shelf life, medical infection control, durable goods, efficient transport) but plastic waste, especially that generated by single use items, is a current and urgent problem. This project will build capacity for recycling HTRPs and demonstrate how the technology can be rolled out around the world to address this global problem.