As the UK’s leading sustainable waste management company, Biffa is committed to continually improving its recycling capabilities to ensure more materials can be recycled in the UK. The extra capacity at its Aldridge site will mean more plastic waste can be recycled. Biffa has set itself a target of quadrupling its plastic recycling capacity by 2030.
Mick Davis, Chief Operating Officer for the Recourses and Energy Division at Biffa, said: “Doubling the amount of materials we can recycle at one of the country’s largest plastic recycling facilities (PRFs) is great news both for Biffa and the UK as a whole. It means more recycling can happen on our own shores and creates sustainable materials that can be used in manufacturing. The additional capacity is a significant investment in our business within the North East and further establishes Biffa as a leader in in closed-loop plastic recycling.”
PRFs are essential to provide raw materials for the production industry, separating out different items and preparing them for future use. The Aldridge PRF is a multifunctional facility which can process the following from a household recycling stream:
- Plastic bottles and containers
- Aluminium and steel cans
- Glass Bottles and Jars
Biffa is partnering with Turmec, a world leader in recycling solutions as part of the upgrade, to install state of the art Pellenc Optical Sorters to sort the material into the highest of standards.
The new upgraded facility will provide:
Type of Plastic | Example |
PET Nat (Polyethylene Terephthalate Natural) | ClearEvian water bottle |
HDPE Nat (High Density Polyethylene Natural) | Milk bottle |
HDPE Jazz (High Density Polyethylene Jazz) | Coloured household cleaning bottle |
PP (Polypropylene) | Butter tub / Yoghurt Pots |
All plastic grades from the Aldridge facility will be used to feed Biffa’s new and existing polymer’s facilities. Aldridge will have the technology to produce a high grade PET Natural for Biffa’s £27.5m Seaham facility, where its state of the art optical sorters will be able to remove multilayer food trays providing an industry leading product for Seaham.
Biffa is a leader in plastic recycling, having built the UK's first food grade PET closed loop plastic recycling facility in Seaham, County Durham, last year. Here, it converts plastic recycling into pellets to be sold on to drinks makers and other manufactures for a range of uses.
It also recently announced a partnership with Nestlé Waters UK to make every BUXTON® bottle more recyclable, using 100% recycled PET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate or rPET) produced at Biffa’s Seaham facility. Plastic bottles are recycled at Seaham and the material is turned into pellets, which are then used to create the new BUXTON® bottles.
