Green Strategy and Sustainability
Zero Screening waste to fill.
Environmental regulations and consumer demand on businesses to reduce their carbon footprint is high. Helping recycle materials that would otherwise become waste is one way many companies choose to reduce their environmental footprint.
Like other plastics, many polyurethane products can be recycled in various ways to remove them from the waste stream and recapture the value inherent in the material. Most consumers are familiar with recycling plastic bottles and containers. Polyurethane recycling, on the other hand, usually happens elsewhere —on job sites, in industrial settings, during building demolition—and takes many forms, from relatively simple reuse to breaking down the material into its chemical constituents.
We have been involved with developing the IP for over five years to find a practical, economically viable model to bring the specific polyester PUs being used in the screening industry back into the value chain as an alternative to the current practices of dumping, etc. Test work has been conducted on various sites on a small batch scale with very good results. The derived model would add value across the value chain, starting with the localised SMME closer to the mines that would do the first stages of recovery up to the manufacturer/supplier, end user and, most importantly the environment.