Turkish waste management group Biotrend Energy (Istanbul; www.biotrendenerji.com.tr) has appointed US technology giant Honeywell (Charlotte, North Carolina; www.honeywell.com) to build a chemical plastics recycling plant in Turkey.

No details were given regarding when the plant would be built, but once operational, the partners said it would be capable of turning 30,000 t of mixed plastics waste into Honeywell recycled polymer feedstock per year, utilising Honeywell’s UpCycle chemical reprocessing technology.

Related: Honeywell commercialises UpCycle advanced recycling technology

Biotrend Energy currently processes 4.5 mn t of waste annually across 18 facilities in Turkey. The group said it was only able to recover a low percentage of mechanically recycled materials, while some types of plastics waste can’t be recycled mechanically at all due to various process limitations caused by contamination, colours and additives used in plastics production. Those materials that cannot be mechanically recycled are either converted into refuse-derived fuel or sent to landfill.