Monday 16 March 2020

‘UK must invest £7.5bn in Plastic Parks over next decade to tackle mountains of waste’

The UK needs to invest more than £7.5 billion in 'Plastic Park' infrastructure over the next decade to tackle the problem of plastic rubbish.

That's according to waste and infrastructure business Peel Environmental, which says such facilities are needed to deal with plastic waste where recycling is not a viable option - they will take plastic at the end of its life, maximise what can be removed for recycling and use the remaining non-recyclable plastic to create electricity, hydrogen or other useful products.

The firm suggests the 'one-stop-shops' could provide a "complete solution" for the 4.9 million tonnes of plastic waste currently generated in the UK each year and says they would prevent rubbish ending up in landfill, exported overseas or polluting the ocean.

With the first Plastic Park planned for Peel Environmental’s Protos site in Cheshire, the company will work with Waste2Tricity to pioneer plastic-to-hydrogen technology and has signed an agreement to deploy equipment from PowerHouse Energy Group at its Protos site.

It notes each park can be tailored to local needs, "providing local councils with the comfort that their plastic waste is being handled responsibly".

Chairman of Waste2Tricity, Tim Yeo said: "We are proud to be an integral part of Peel’s visionary ‘Plastic Parks’, delivering an innovative solution to the plastic problem we face here in the UK.

"Not only will PowerHouse Energy’s pioneering Distributed Modular Generation technology provide an innovative solution to the plastic problem faced here in the UK but it will be producing low-cost hydrogen – a fuel of the future and one which many are recognising as being vital to getting to net zero emissions."