Canada-based firm has licensing agreements in Mexico, Brazil and India.

Brant, Ontario-based rubber recycling technology firm ReNeuvo Group Inc. says it is in the process of selecting a state in Mexico in which to locate its first international plant.

The company adds that it has secured a strategic partnership involving an exclusive license agreement to bring its technology beyond Canada to Mexico, Brazil and India.

ReNeuvo says it uses a proprietary formulation of reprocessed recycled rubber crumb and plastic material to produce a thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) material that can replace TPE materials made from virgin compounds.

The firm says its XyloX product does not require any additives or adhesives and that “the bond is made at the molecular level.” XyloX itself is also 100 percent recyclable, reducing landfill requirements for traditional elastomer production, says ReNeuvo.

ReNeuvo Group Inc. executives say XyloX can be pelletized for injection molding applications, or it can be extruded as a profile with the added benefit of incorporating the elastic properties of rubbers. “As a result, these materials are ideal for large variety of applications in the automotive sector,” says the company.

“It is also easier to mold and more consistent in performance, reducing processing costs and energy requirements,” adds the firm.

In its home county of Brant, the company says its ReNeuvo Composites Brant facility will produce approximately 45,000 tons of XyloX TPE in 2021.

“With ever-increasing government initiatives to institute ‘green’ products, we feel that our product will champion the market for a new, eco-friendly TPE made with no additives or adhesives that will infuse the global market,” states the company.

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Recycling and waste federation says EU funding can help reduce landfilling of discarded plastic.

The Brussels-based European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services (FEAD) says the “ambitious but achievable objectives” put forward by the European Union’s Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan will require the EU to “step up its investments in waste recycling and waste treatment capacity.”

More recycling is key to achieve a circular economy and be successful in the fight against climate change by avoiding CO2 emissions and creating sustainable, innovative, local jobs, adds FEAD.

“No doubt that waste recycling is a best environmental option, but it suffers from a lack of competitiveness compared to the use of virgin materials that do not incorporate environmental costs,” says Peter Kurth, FEAD president.

“The unprecedented proposed EU recovery plan will be followed by more detailed allocation of EU support,” adds Kurth. “This is the perfect time for [the European Community] to foresee a massive support through EU funds for reducing massive landfilling, developing selective waste collection schemes, investing in sorting installations, starting and strengthening activities in the whole recycling and recovery chain. Last but not least, the tax on nonrecycled plastic has definitely to be further explored as its own EU budget resource.”

Concrete policy and economic instruments are necessary to achieve the circular economy objectives, and create a strong demand for recyclables, says FEAD. The association makes these recommendations:

FEAD says its members are national waste management associations covering 19 EU member states, plus Norway. FEAD’s members represent more than 3,000 companies with activities in many waste management sectors.

The recycled packaging will contain plastic material recovered using advanced recycling technology.

Berry Global Group Inc., a packaging producer based in Evansville, Indiana, plans to collaborate with its longtime customer, Mondelēz International, to supply packaging containing recycled plastic for Philadelphia, a cream cheese brand. 

According to a news release from Berry, the package contains plastic material recovered using advanced recycling technology from Berry’s partnership with SABIC, a global chemistry company based in Saudi Arabia. 

“We are pleased to partner with Mondelēz International in providing packaging made from this advanced recycling technology. By recovering and diverting plastic that would have otherwise been sent to landfill or incineration, we are working towards our common goal of promoting a circular economy,” says Jean-Marc Galvez, president of Berry’s Consumer Packaging International division.

Berry reports that it has worked on several sustainability initiatives in recent years, including investment in mechanical and chemical recycling, using recycled material in products and making global commitments to address plastic waste. In 2019, Berry committed that 100 percent of its consumer goods packaging would be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. 

The Procter & Gamble subsidiary created molds in just days to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Imflux, Hamilton, Ohio, used its ability to create custom injection molds to help with the high demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) in the United States related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Procter & Gamble subsidiary says it is the only injection molding company that integrates processing software and machine learning and it's now using that technology to make PPE to help around the country.  

“We jumped into that conversation with a view on how could we use our skills and our talents and our assets to help in the things that work more broadly and could potentially be made available to the health care workers,” Imflux CEO Mary Wagner told the Journal-News, Butler County, Ohio.

For Imflux, the help came in two ways: using the injection molding to create headbands that attach to face shields and building molds that can help other companies to create test swabs.

The four-cavity mold for the face shields came together in 11 days, from drawing to delivery, while the 50-cavity nasal swab mold came together in nine.

Imflux also worked with a small team at P&G to create a prototype mold of nares (near nasal) swab variants. These could lead to better testing as they don’t require health care workers to wear full PPE to use them.

The effort to create these items started at the end of April, and they were first donated to the Cleveland Clinic and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Now, the company is working with the Federal Emergency Management  Agency to distribute the products more widely.

“We have an important piece in the flexibility we have in both making molds quickly and in producing the actual headbands to then provide the larger quantities,” Wagner says. Imflux has remained open since the start of the pandemic as it was deemed essential business. This allowed the company to build these needed items quickly. “We looked at the assets and the skills and capabilities we had and said, ‘We can help do this very quickly,’” Wagner says. “Part of it was just our passion to try and help provide support in the communities in which we’re working and living.”