New Plastic Product Made from Textile Industry Waste is the title of an industrial symbiosis project carried out in collaboration between partners of the Packaging Cluster and Tèxtils.CAT, aiming to introduce into the market plastic products made from recovered polypropylene granules sourced from textile industry waste.
The project, co-financed by the Catalonia Waste Agency, started in January 2019 and concluded on March 30, 2021. It was conducted by the companies LIASA and NG PLASTICS, members of Tèxtils.CAT and the Packaging Cluster, respectively. Both clusters actively collaborated in the project’s development.
The first task involved the separation and selection of waste resulting from the industrial process of polypropylene filament extrusion, performed by LIASA, a manufacturer of cords, elastic bands, tapes, technical cords, and polypropylene filament.
LIASA cannot reuse this waste as recovered raw material in the same production process, as the resulting filament would not have the necessary properties for its final application. For this reason, the project was developed to find an outlet for this waste in another industry.
Once selected, the filament waste undergoes a transformation process that allows it to be converted into a resource: granules for use in plastic extrusion, meeting the technical requirements for its application.
NG Plastics, a manufacturer of plastic packaging for various sectors, has utilized this granule to produce new containers with the same quality and characteristics as those made from virgin material, specifically a part of a sparkling wine bottle cap, through an injection process. This product is made with 100% recycled material.
To determine the environmental impact of the process, a life cycle analysis (LCA) was conducted, considering the grinding and extrusion processes, as the injection process does not vary between using virgin and recycled material. The analysis was carried out by the technology center Eurecat.
The result indicates that the recycling process of polypropylene filament is environmentally favorable and avoids considerable environmental impacts. For example, each kilogram of recycled polypropylene filament prevents the emission of 1.11 kilograms of CO2 equivalents.
NG Plastics is expected to produce 5 million units of caps per year using recycled granules, which translates to savings of 36.5 tons of virgin raw material and a reduction of over 40.5 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions.
This project arose from a previous initiative, PACTEX, driven by the same clusters and also co-financed by the Catalonia Waste Agency, which aimed to establish synergies between the companies of both clusters and promote effective use of material resources, by reducing industrial waste at source, reusing products, improving recyclability, and valorizing waste.