Plastic venture

Warrington-based European Metal Recycling (EMR) and Richmond, California-based MBA Polymers (MBA) have formed a joint venture company to build and operate a plastics recycling facility in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, that will focus on recovering plastics from shredder residue.

The new company is majority owned by MBA Polymers and will recover plastics from upgraded 'shredder residue'. This shredder residue is a complex plastics-rich mixture of materials that is available after the recycling of metals from cars, consumer electronic devices and appliances.

It is estimated that more than 15 million tons of plastics from just these sources are disposed of each year around the world. These plastics are commonly land-filled or incinerated at high economic and environmental costs because it is considered too complicated or expensive to recover and to separate them.

EMR will concentrate the plastics fraction of the shredder residue produced from its large-scale metal recycling operations and ship the material to the joint venture. This additional processing will also allow EMR to capture a higher percentage of the metals.