Recycling up to 376,000 tonnes of waste per annum that would otherwise have gone to landfill/incineration through a new sustainable multi-life NIR sortable polymer pigment and recycling system

The vast majority of sorting recycling facilities that handle plastics use Near Infrared (NIR: 750 -- 1700 nm wavelength) spectroscopy for automated detection of polymer type for effective sorting; this technique has been chosen and developed over the past twenty years as being the only cost effective and robust technique for sorting mixed post consumer wastes (compared to Mid / far IR, Raman, UV, XRay fluorescence etc).

NIR spectroscopy is likely to remain the de facto standard identification technique for sorting, due to its ability to identify dirty and wet polymers, the equipment simplicity, speed and robustness, no need for sample preparation, and its low cost. However, the NIR technique fails when trying to identify black materials and other colours that contain carbon black. This is because the carbon black pigment absorbs the incident infrared beam and prevents the reflection of the polymer's characteristic spectrum used to identify and sort polymer types. This volume, in excess of 4 million tonnes (EU), has a potential annual value of over £4.4 billion (if recycled) and represents a significant waste of finite resources and lost value to the economy.

This project will build on our work and experience to date in order to create a closed processing loop of NIR sortable black and coloured polymer which will enable NIR sorting operations to segregate black and coloured plastic for recycling where they have been unable to before, crucially - using existing infrastructure.

It will also help to address one of the UK's Grand Challenges as set out in the new UK Industrial Strategy -- namely Clean Growth: "The move to cleaner economic growth -- through low carbon technologies and the efficient use of resources"