A group of European companies has set up a new non-profit organisation to develop and promote chemical recycling technologies for plastics waste. Chemical Recycling Europe (ChemRecEurope, Brussels / Belgium; www.chemicalrecyclingeurope.eu) was launched on 22 January 2019 with Carlos Monreal, CEO of UK-based technology company Plastic Energy (London; www.plasticenergy.com), as its first president. Other board members are Jeroen Bulk, chief financial officer at Ioniqa (Eindhoven / The Netherlands; www.ioniqa.com), Maurizio Crippa, CEO of Gr3n (Lugano / Switzerland; www.gr3n-recycling.com), Richard Daley, managing director of ReNew ELP (Redcar / UK; www.renewelp.co.uk) and Floris Geeris, co-owner of Integrated Green Energy Solutions (Chatswood / Australia; www.igesolutions.org).

ChemRecEurope said it wants to strengthen collaboration with EU institutions and develop positive industry-wide relationships across Europe’s chemical recycling value chain in order to boost specific polymer recycling.

“It is the right time to enhance the opportunities for chemical recycling in Europe in order for the plastics industry to be fully circular. We will work together with all stakeholders having an interest in our activities and we want to ensure a ‘plastics back to plastics’ development in order to differentiate our activity from incineration,” said Monreal. “Our chemical recycling companies will handle the more difficult plastics waste that can’t be mechanically recycled and are still being landfilled or incinerated today. Chemical recycling is therefore a complementary solution for recycling end-of-life plastics and an important additional step for the circularity of the plastics industry even at global level.”

The organisation is holding a conference on chemical recycling in Brussels / Belgium on 4 June 2019.