UK Research & Innovation’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK, will be at this year’s Resource & Waste Management 2024 event this week (Stand R-G150, Hall 19, Birmingham NEC) showcasing some of the exciting current research and innovation projects it has funded, as well as wider research initiatives to improve plastic circularity and reduce plastic pollution.
The £60 million SSPP Challenge is working to make plastic packaging fit for a sustainable future. It is the largest and most ambitious UK government investment to date in sustainable plastics research and innovation and is focused on stimulating a step change in the UK’s ability to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging.
The funded projects showcased on the RWM stand demonstrate the breadth of SSPP’s portfolio and the range of specific challenges being addressed, from films and flexibles and mixed plastics recycling to reuse and refill and smarter packaging data.
- COtooCLEAN™ is a revolutionary decontamination technology than can turn post-consumer plastic films back into food-grade film. The process combines super-critical CO2 with green co-solvents to remove odours, oils, fats and printing inks. Requiring no water or corrosive chemicals, it can also delaminate and de-metallise multi-layer films.
- The free-to-use Open 3P Data Standard for packaging provides a ‘common language’ for the international packaging ecosystem to gather, share and use data to improve EPR compliance reporting, drive sustainability and increase efficiencies. GING is an Open 3P compliant data-sharing platform that supports smarter packaging data management, streamlines reporting and promotes cross-sector collaboration and sustainability.
- Stopford Ltd and the University of Birmingham are co-developing a recycling process (SolvergyTM) which uses hot compressed water as a green solvent to selectively depolymerise hard-to-recycle plastic waste streams (such as multi-layer laminates and PET fruit punnets) into simple chemicals that can be re-used as feedstocks for circular plastic production.
- Impact Recycling’s novel, disruptive Baffled Oscillation Separation System (BOSS) technology is a water-based density separation technology designed to separate multi-layer and mono-layer flexible packaging. By separating the two waste streams to 95% purity, the BOSS process allows mono-layer flexibles to be recycled into high-quality consumer-grade plastic packaging.
- Reposit is a returnable packaging platform that works for all stakeholders, collaborating with major retailers, FMCG brands and industry partners. Scalable across categories and channels, Reposit facilitates the reverse logistics and the washing infrastructure to make sure packaging is refilled and reused, all while rewarding consumers for returning.
- GRIP-R is a project by Recycleye, the company automating quality control of waste materials with AI-powered robotics. The GRIP-R innovation addresses the difficulty of sorting films and flexible plastics by redesigning the robot’s gripping system to manipulate films, reducing the risk of blockages and automating blockage detection and recovery.
As well as having a presence at the show, the SSPP Challenge has created a series of short downloadable case studies – ‘Driving plastics packaging innovation’. Grouped into four thematic areas – Reuse & Refill, Films & Flexible, Advanced Recycling and Advanced Sorting – the case studies provide a snapshot of some of the projects funded since 2020 by the SSPP Challenge.
