Funding of over £3m has been announced for four projects comprising a new plastics recycling partnership, Project Beacon, which has the potential to recycle all plastics in Scotland and beyond – even those that currently can’t be recycled.
Project Beacon, at Binn Farm in Perthshire, is reportedly lighting the way to a circular world of complete plastics recycling.
The project is backed by £1.7m from Zero Waste Scotland’s Circular Economy Investment Fund (with around another £1.7m leveraged form the private sector) – supported by the Scottish government and the European Regional Development Fund.
Scotland’s Environment secretary visited Project Beacon to see progress on the new state-of-the art recycling centre, which brings together a group of cutting-edge recycling firms: PI Polymer Recycling along with Recycling Technologies and Impact Recycling, with Binn Group signed on as supply chain partners.
The system they’re reportedly developing uses new state-of-the-art separation systems to support mechanical recycling, fused with a game-changing chemical feedstock recycling process.
This includes a patented process based on thermal cracking, which recycles end-of-life plastic waste that typically cannot be recycled using mechanical methods – for example, mixed, laminated, black, film and even contaminated plastic waste, as well as hard plastics.
This new process produces reportedly a range of chemical constituents that can be used to create new virgin plastics, or other chemical products. It’s intended that this first demonstration facility will be up and running later this year.
Cabinet secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, Roseanna Cunningham said: “Initiatives like Project Beacon have the potential to be potentially ground-breaking as they are finding new uses and economic potential for hard-to-recycle plastics which could make a significant contribution to reducing waste and increase recycling.
“Project Beacon’s ethos and partnership approach supports our work to tackle Scotland’s throwaway culture which includes our commitment to a deposit return scheme and the recent appointment of an expert panel to look at single-use items.”
The £18m Circular Economy Investment Fund, administered by Zero Waste Scotland, offers investment for SMEs based in Scotland and supports work that will deliver circular economy growth. It is supported by the European Regional Development Fund through the £73m Resource Efficiency Circular Economy Accelerator Programme.
