Recycling 22

packaging never becomes waste. We are dedicated to reducing the virgin plastic we use and with the breakthrough Carbios enzymatic recycling technology, we can help keep valuable material in the circular economy, reduce waste and take another step toward a truly closed loop system.”

Roberto Vanin, Chief R&D Officer, Suntory Beverage & Food Europe, added: “The global issue of plastic waste requires transformational thinking, creative partnerships and innovative brands coming together to seek out new solutions. Continued investment in new ways of tackling waste and creating true circularity such as this ground-breaking technology from Carbios will be key to Suntory Beverage & Food Europe achieving its 100% sustainable plastic ambition.”

Enzymatic recycling overcomes the issue of degradation in conventional recycling and can be used on any type of PET plastic. Because Carbios’ recycling process works under mild conditions, it could also lower the carbon footprint of PET waste treatment by saving 30% of CO2 emissions compared to a conventional end of life mix of incineration and landfill, taking virgin PET production substitution into account.

The successful completion of these initial food-grade bottles is a major milestone in the Consortium’s validation of Carbios’ technology. This partnership is part of a growing trend amongst brands to collaborate across industries to tackle these global challenges, working towards a world of circularity, where we limit the production of virgin plastic.

Carbios will license its technology to PET manufacturers worldwide, accelerating the global adoption of enzymatic recycling for all kinds of PET based products.

CARBIOS – FACT SHEET

1 14% of plastic packaging is recycled for future use (EPA)

2 More than 359 million tons of plastics are produced globally, including 70 million tons of PET (Nature)

3 PET plastic accounts for around 20% of plastic produced globally

4 CARBIOS has discovered and optimized another natural enzyme to create a super-charged enzyme that is 10,000 times more efficient than any previous biological recycling discovery to date (Nature)

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP DEMONSTRATES RECYCLING OF SINGLEUSE FACEMASKS POSSIBLE

Procter & Gamble, Fraunhofer Institute UMSICHT and SABIC have announced their collaboration in an innovative circular economy pilot project which aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of closed-loop recycling of single-use facemasks.

Due to COVID-19, use of billions of disposable facemasks is raising environmental concerns especially when they are thoughtlessly discarded in public spaces, including - parks, open-air venues and beaches. Apart from the challenge of dealing with such huge volumes of essential personal healthcare items in a sustainable way, simply throwing the used masks away for disposal on landfill sites or in incineration plants represents a loss of valuable feedstock for new material.

“Recognizing the challenge, we set out to explore how used facemasks could potentially be returned into the value chain of new facemask production”, says Dr. Peter Dziezok, Director R&D Open Innovation at P&G. “But creating a true circular solution from both a sustainable and an economically feasible perspective takes partners. Therefore, we teamed up with Fraunhofer CCPE and Fraunhofer UMSICHT’s expert scientists and SABIC’s Technology & Innovation specialists to investigate potential solutions.”

As part of the pilot, P&G collected used facemasks worn by employees or given to visitors at its manufacturing and research sites in Germany. Although those masks are always disposed of responsibly, there was no ideal route in place to recycle them efficiently. To help demonstrate a potential step change in this scenario, special collection bins were set up, and the collected used masks were sent to Fraunhofer for further processing in a dedicated research pyrolysis plant.

“A single-use medical product such as a face mask has high hygiene requirements, both in terms of disposal and production. Mechanical recycling, would have not done the job”, explains Dr. Alexander Hofmann, Head of Department Recycling Management at Fraunhofer UMSICHT.

“In our solution, therefore, the masks were first automatically shredded and then thermochemically converted to pyrolysis oil. Pyrolysis breaks the plastic down into molecular fragments under pressure and heat, which will also destroy any residual pollutants or pathogens, such as the Coronavirus.

“In this way it is possible to produce feedstock for new plastics in virgin quality that can also meet the requirements for medical products”, adds Hofmann, who is also Head of Research Department “Advanced Recycling” at Fraunhofer CCPE.

The pyrolysis oil was then sent to SABIC to be used as feedstock for the production of new PP resin. The resins were produced using the widely recognized principle of mass balance to combine the alternative feedstock with fossil-based feedstock in the production process. Mass balance is considered a crucial bridge between today’s large scale linear economy and the more sustainable circular economy of the future, which today is operated on a smaller scale but is expected to grow quickly.

“The high-quality circular PP polymer obtained in this pilot clearly demonstrates that closed-loop recycling is achievable through active collaboration of players from across the value chain”, emphasizes Mark Vester, Global Circular Economy Leader at SABIC. “The circular material is part of our TRUCIRCLE™ portfolio, aimed at preventing valuable used plastic from becoming waste and at mitigating the depletion of fossil resources.”

Finally, to close the loop, the PP polymer was supplied to P&G, where it was processed into non-woven fibers material. “This pilot project has helped us to assess if the close loop approach could work for hygienic and medical grade plastics”, says Hansjörg Reick, P&G Senior Director Open Innovation. “Of course, further work is needed but the results so far have been very encouraging.”

The entire closed loop pilot project from facemask collection to production was developed and implemented within only seven months. The transferability of advanced recycling to other feedstocks and chemical products is being further researched at Fraunhofer CCPE.

SAGES TEACH THE ART OF ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE

While the conversation about climate change has been dominated by mitigation, what is equally crucial is the need to adapt to the unavoidable changes already on their way. “We have absolutely no choice but to learn to adapt to a future with a very different climate,” says environmental consultancy Climate Sense. “It is imperative organisations act now.” By HELEN COMPSON

For 20 years now, the experts behind environmental consultancy Climate Sense have been driving the subject of adaptation to climate change up the political agenda.

It is no small measure of their success that this year, in Glasgow, Climate Sense director and technical lead Prof. John Dora is developing related sessions for COP26 in partnership with the University of Birmingham, the Strengthening Infrastructure Risk Management in the Atlantic (SIRMA) Project and the International Standards Organisation (ISO).

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties will also be the first COP to boast a Resilience Hub, dedicated specifically to the prerequisites of adapting to climate change.

Eighteen years ago, it was an entirely different story, says Doogie Black, director and lead analyst at Climate Sense. Back then, organisations simply didn’t grasp the onus on them to act responsibly and act now!

Tasked, in an EUfunded post, with raising awareness about the need to prepare for the impact of a future climate that will be more severe than the one we have, Doogie faced an uphill struggle in 2003.

Until very recently, any talk about climate change has tended to be about mitigation – the need to reduce carbon emissions and to preserve/bolster the carbon sequestration potential of our forests and peat bogs.

Few have considered the other side of the equation. Doogie said: “Even if we managed to stop all emissions right now, the repercussions of the damage we have already done will continue for at least another 30 years, and there’s no chance of us stopping that.”

In his determination to open up the conversation and to get individuals and organisations alike to step up to the plate, he began studying human behaviour in the process of decision-making.

What would make people accept and address the need for adaptation, he wanted to know. And what type of support would encourage them to embed adaptation to climate change in their decision-making? The five years of EU funding he received gave him the opportunity to engage with some of the “biggest brains in the world” to propel adaptation into European consciousness.

By the time he started up his own consultancy in 2008, Doogie himself was a leading expert on behaviour change and adaptive capacity.

A key member of the team that developed the Capacity Diagnosis & Development framework, rated as being the most effective method in the field, he has since applied the framework to assessing more than 2000 public, private and civil society organisations all over the world.

But in the beginning, his primary function was one of education. “I was going out looking at the adaptive capacity of organisations, their people and their systems. I had developed the software and the metrics to do that, so I thought I had the best consultancy in the world, because everyone needs this,” he laughed.

“But then I realised nobody knew they needed it. At that time, there was still a lot of argument going on about whether climate change was natural or human-induced.

“It’s a different world today. Slowly people are coming to understand that we are talking about the adaptation efforts required for the human race to survive. People are prepared to have that conversation today.”

Since 2017, Doogie has been a member of the British Standards Institute’s Adaptation to Change Committee, the national body responsible for ensuring the matter is fully incorporated into UK and, where possible, European and International standards.

In 2019, he and John Dora launched Climate Sense. The two had met while drafting ISO14090, the first ever international standard on adaptation to climate change.

Indeed, John, the global lead for adaptation for the International Standards Organisation, chaired the international working group concerned. A world-class authority on infrastructure and adaptation, his clients have included the World Bank, the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and

It’s a different world today. Slowly people are coming to understand that we are talking about the adaptation efforts required for the human race to survive. People are prepared to have that conversation today.

John Dora at COP23