Finnish oil company Neste has announced a product that can be used in the production of plastics which is made entirely from recycled and renewable raw materials such as food refuse and oils.
Photo: Neste
Neste's renewable and recyclable plastics can be used in a variety of applications.
Neste RE has been engineered to tackle climate change by reducing the reliance on the plastics industry for virgin fossil products while also looking to tackle the various end-of-life issues associated with chemicals and polymers.
The product can be applied to a wide variety of products, from sports gear to toys to high-sensitivity medical equipment.
Neste hopes their product will encourage movement towards a more circular economy involving less waste, which currently only accounts for 8.6% of the global economy.
They currently have around a decade's experience in producing renewable and circular alternatives for transportation and is now looking to expand its interests into the polymers and chemicals sectors.
Lars Börger, Vice President of Renewable Polymers & Chemicals at Neste said: "We need to take drastic action to achieve the necessary change towards a circular economy in materials. With Neste RE, we combine the best of renewable and recycled materials, to serve as a sustainable feedstock alternative for the polymers and chemicals sectors.
"This new product provides a new solution for the industry to close the circle of material flows. Neste RE is available globally, and together with like-minded partners, we can use Neste RE as a tool to change and revolutionize plastics."
Neste RE is both renewed and recycled: the product's renewable components can be produced from waste and residue oils and fats and sustainably-produced vegetable oils whereas its recycled components come from chemically-recycled plastic waste that cannot be recycled manually, such as coloured, multilayered or multi-material packaging.
In 2018, over 29 million tonnes of plastic waste was collected. However, only 9.4 million tonnes was sent in for recycling and even less actually recycled. The share of global oil production that is expected to be used in plastics production is forecast to hit 20% by 2050.
Neste has collaborated with various companies in order to promote their product and use it in a variety of applications.
In 2019, Neste collaborated with LyondellBasell to produce the world's first commercial-scale volumes of renewable, bio-based polypropylene and a partnership with Borealis in March 2020 produced renewable polypropylene with renewable propane at a propane dehydrogenation facility for the first time in history.
Working with Unilever and Recycling Technologies, Neste combined expertise to improve systems for chemically recycling plastics waste.
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