On this episode, Ben Gibbons of Circular11 joins me to share how their startup company is turning plastic waste into low-carbon building products that outlast and outperform traditional building materials.
In the UK, 75% of plastic goes to waste, and a significant reason for this is the cross-polymer contamination that is an inseparable part of the recycling system.
The mixture of plastics, and the range of chemicals in them, means that manufacturers can't achieve consistent product characteristics, and therefore don't buy the waste streams.
The team at Circular 11 has developed a process control system that dynamically adjusts our own sets of composite formulations to achieve a consistent, high quality output from low-grade variable inputs.
They currently manufacture and sell products to validate the technology, and will then license the process control system to other manufacturers, enabling the wider polymer processing sector to use low-grade plastic as a functional feedstock.
You can learn more about their company by visiting https://circular11.com.