The impact and burden of end-of-life plastic and its effect on human health, wildlife and the environment is ever prevalent in the news.
With the UK’s recycling rate at just 45%, the majority of plastic packaging is sent to incineration or landfill, resulting in environmental plastic pollution and increasing CO2 emissions. A solution is urgently needed to tackle the rising volume of waste plastic.
With the goal of 500,000 tonnes annually of recycled plastic waste capacity in development by 2025, Mura’s proprietary patented technology, Cat-HTR™ (Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor), is an advanced recycling process able to convert end-of-life plastics back into the chemical and oils from which they were made, for use in the petrochemical industry in the production of new plastic and other materials. This broadens the scope of recyclable plastic materials, diverts plastic pollution away from landfill, incineration and the environment and helps to create a circular economy for plastic.
Cat-HTR™ uses supercritical water, heat and pressure via hydrothermal liquefaction to break long-chain hydrocarbons, donating hydrogen to produce shorter-chain, stable hydrocarbon products.
The first commercial-scale site (ReNew ELP) is in development in Teesside, North East England, with additional global sites in the pipeline. This first site will recycle 80,000tpa on completion.
In October 2020, ReNew ELP announced their £4.42million grant award from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, to help build the first site in Teesside, which commences construction in Q1, 2021. Focussing on the UK Government’s priority to drive economic growth through new technology, the award comes through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging programme. It recognises the commercial-scale feasibility of the technology and potential of the advanced recycling sector to help meet ambitious plastic recycling targets.
Rebecca Pow MP, Under-Secretary of State for Defra says: “The Government is committed to both clamping down on the unacceptable plastic waste that harms our environment and ensuring more materials can be reused instead of being thrown away. By investing in these truly ground-breaking technologies we will help to drive these efforts even further, and I look forward to seeing them develop and deliver real results.”
Our planet depends on plastics in so many ways, but we don’t have to live with plastic pollution, particularly in important marine environments like the Coral Triangle. Mura is working to help rid the world of waste plastic by creating valuable products from it and proudly supports the ambitions of BluHope.
Using Cat-HTR™ we can create new plastics from waste, reduce the need for fossil resource and prevent plastic pollution in our environment.
