COtooCLEAN, the innovative multi-participant project by Nextek Limited, has been selected from over 600 registrants as a finalist in the Alliance Prize in Circular Solutions for Flexibles.
As one of the five finalists, Professor Edward Kosior, founder of Nextek, will be making a final pitch on 29 November at the NYC Stock Exchange for the US$3million prize.
“This is a great honour and we are delighted to have this opportunity to fast-forward our unique process, which has the potential to make a major contribution to the circularity of films in a global context,” Kosior said.
The Alliance Prize in Circular Solutions for Flexibles aims to identify and accelerate novel solutions that enable more effective collection, processing, and recycling of flexible film plastics.
Nextek’s focus on finding a viable solution to effectively and sustainably decontaminate food-grade post-consumer polyolefin films led to the COtooCLEAN project.
Their ground breaking process, based on supercritical CO2 to decontaminate plastic films back to food-grade quality, aims to fill the gap in the recycling stream where food-safe post-consumer polyolefin films are currently missing.
COtooCLEAN’s unique commercial process can be integrated into mechanical recycling operations, and can treat printed and multi-layer films to make them much easier to recycle.
COtooCLEAN participants led by Nextek Limited
Viridor Ltd is one of the UK's leading recycling, resource and waste management companies. Viridor will be the collector and recycler of films and potential plant builder for the scale up.
Allied Bakeries is one of the UK's leading bread manufacturers and the vast majority of their bakery goods are currently wrapped in polyethylene packaging. They will evaluate the resulting recycled material with the involvement of their packaging manufacturer, supply films for de-inking and test recycled films on their packaging lines.
Amcor is a global leader in developing and producing responsible packaging for food, beverage, pharmaceutical, medical, home- and personal-care, and other products. Amcor works with leading companies around the world to protect their products and the people who rely on them, differentiate brands, and improve supply chains through a range of flexible and rigid packaging, specialty cartons, closures, and services. The company is focused on making packaging that is increasingly light-weighted, recyclable and reusable, and made using an increasing amount of recycled content.
University of Nottingham, School of Chemistry (Professor Steve Howdle) will conduct the majority of the optimisation research in the early work packages which will lead to scale up. The UoN team is skilled in sustainability, polymer chemistry, the use of supercritical fluids, analytical chemistry and experienced in the commercialisation of academic research.
The Biocomposites Centre (BC) at Bangor University has invested in the most versatile laboratory and pilot-scale CO2 equipment in the UK. They will focus on LCA and process optimisation as they have extensive analytical facilities to assist with characterisation of materials.
Suprex, a joint venture between Phytovation and Bangor University, specialises in the development of applications of supercritical CO2 and will take a lead in equipment design and safe operation and construction and assist in large scale trials of the post consumer films.
