The PlastiCity Network
We foresee a quadruple helix co-creation process involving industry, government, research and citizens. Our network therefore brings together a diverse range of urban and academic skills, expertise and approaches and different national and local systems that will help identify best practice, ensuring that we can develop a replicable model that is relevant to other urban environments in the 2S region.
- City of Ghent
- Ghent University
- University of Portsmouth
- Southend On Sea Borough Council
- The Hague
- Van Werven
- Team2
- ARMINES
- Metabolic
- DPL Group
- GRCT
- Theys Recyclage
- WeLOOP
The City of Ghent, Belgium’s 2nd largest city, accomodating the 2nd most important Belgian seaport, is boosting sustainability as one of its core values in its mission statement. Although the garbage collection
and waste management is entirely a competence of an intermunicipal utility company (IVAGO), the City is undertaking a lot of complementary actions, e.g.: the creation of sustainable business areas, energy coaching for SMEs, the stimulation of repair cafés, citizen awareness actions, etc. Moreover, Ghent is promoting actively its research centres and spearhead industries. In particular, the recently launched “Cleantech Cluster Ghent Region”, with a strong focus on the use of waste streams as raw materials, is of major relevance for this project.
The UGent partners belong to the ‘Plastics 2 resource’ pipeline of the CAPTURE initiative on resource recovery. The partners have expertise on the sustainable design of chemical production chains with a focus on purification of components from complex streams such as plastic waste, the separation of impurities from plastic waste streams, the processing of thermoplastic polymers (including mixed and recycled plastics), the mechanical recycling of plastics and life cycle and thermodynamics based sustainability analysis at process, plant, and cradle-to-gate level.
The University of Portsmouth (UoP) is a research-active university in the UK. The interdisciplinary Cluster for Sustainable Cities is working on new concepts of resource-efficiency and urban resilience. The Cluster works closely with industry and government across all faculties, and brings together expertise from engineering, urban planning, technology, natural and social sciences, architecture, geography and sustainability. Key themes include resilient communities, smart urban living and the integration of low-carbon technologies. In the last Research Excellence Framework, over 60% of the research submitted was rated as ‘world-leading and internationally excellent’. Research impact was rated as ‘outstanding and very considerable in terms of both its reach and significance’.
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council’s Waste team has extensive experience in the waste management and street cleansing industry, ranging from procurement and contract management through to the delivery of behaviour change and communications programmes, design and delivery of high performing recycling collection schemes and delivering funded projects on time and in budget. We work to closely monitored performance targets and indicators including recycling rates and cleansing standards. Policies and strategies that support the team’s work include Southend’s Waste Management Strategy 2004-2020 (being updated), Essex & Southend Waste Local Plan, Defra’s Waste Strategy for England 2007 (and the subsequent Government Review of Waste Policy in England 2011 and National Waste Management Plan 2013).
The Hague has a strong reputation as an international city of peace & law. The special status draws many heads of Government, international organisations, knowledge institutions. Plastics are vital to the way our economy currently functions, and are used in everything from electronics and medical devices to packaging. The Hague has more than 260,000 households and almost 49,000 companies. Domestic waste alone mounts up to 600,000 kg a day. It contains a lot of plastic waste. The municipality of The Hague is responsible for the collection of the household waste. Several projects and programmes are being run to improve the number of waste stream separation. Furthermore, in the city several initiatives are in place. E.g. The Ocean Cleanup to rid world’s oceans of plastic.
Van Werven is a plastic recycling innovator from the Netherlands that has developed a unique treatment and process for post-consumer plastics, which is followed at its facilities in the Netherlands, England, Belgium, Sweden, Ireland and Poland. 99% of the plastics Van Werven handles are re-used in high-end products. Van Werven has a production in the EU for more than 120.000 tonnes a year of new high quality plastic grinds or powders. The Belgian division of Van Werven will participate in the project.
TEAM2 is, as pôle de competivité, specialized in helping firms and territories in developing new solutions for recycling and circular economy by collaborative innovation. We supply helps in 4 sectors : minerals, plastics and composites, rare earth and strategic metals, innovative equipment for recycling.
ARMINES is a private non-profit research and technological organisation (RTO), funded in 1967, having common research centers with Institut Mines-Telecom. The Department of Polymer Technology and Composites & Mechanical Engineering (DPTCIM) of IMT Lille Douai is a joint research unit managed by ARMINES and its partner engineering school IMT Lille Douai. DTPCIM is a multidisciplinary department with fundamental and industry-oriented research activities, on the optimization/shaping of polymers and composites, as well as their use properties for various applications. Beyond the scientific and technical expertise of its personnel, DTPCIM relies on a technological platform unrivalled in France, bringing together state-of-art technologies for polymer processing at industrial scale.
Metabolic has essentially worked with plastics on every level (from community-based initiatives, to cities and regions, to the company-level), in different products from textiles to agri-plastics and consumer goods, and throughout the supply chain from feedstocks to waste management and recycling. I think this gives us a unique opportunity to bring in our systems perspective.
DPL GROUP has an experience of nearly 40 years in recycling plastic wastes (especially foil packaging). Our company is always passionate to find optimal ways to give a greater value to complicated waste flows. We are aware of the recycling difficulties regarding postconsumer and multi-layer packaging. Our target is to find solutions to recycle those complicated multilayer wastes into valuable prime materials suitable for the production of high quality ned-products in the plastic industry instead of incineration.
As a waste management company since 2009, GRCT has developed competences and experience in the following fields:
- Selective collection of waste fractions, including plastics
- Logistic organisation of industrial waste collection
- Logistic organisation of in- and outflows
- Selection and sorting of recyclable waste fractions
- Structural partnerships with relevant processors
- Relevant connections within the field of waste management
Theys Recyclage specializes in the sorting, preparing and treatment of non-hazardous waste streams. Theys Recyclage has expertise in collection and waste processing in the Douai area and is focusing more and more on plastics.
WeLOOP supports different actors, including businesses, decision makers and institutions to assess, comprehend, improve and communicate their product, process, services and organization sustainability performance. WeLOOP has expertise in Environmental, Social and Economic Life Cycle Assessment of products, services, processes and organizations.
WeLOOP also guide actors to define their strategy, develop their action plans, and implement the sustainability in their organization.
Do you want to be part of our network?
We want to grow a network of partners dedicated to transforming plastics recycling!