P&G, which has made several announcements this year concerning sustainability breakthroughs in the personal care packaging arena—such as Head & Shoulders’ production of the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25% recycled beach plastic—has now announced what it calls a “breakthrough” recycling method.
 
PureCycle Technologies, in partnership with P&G, has opened a plant that will restore used polypropylene (PP) plastic to “virgin-like” quality with a recycling method that they say is one of a kind. The new plant will reportedly enable consumers to purchase more products made from recycled plastic. The patented technology was created in P&G labs as an innovation with “meaningful” sustainability benefits. P&G licensed the technology to PureCycle, a portfolio company of Innventure, a Wasson Enterprise Partnership that commercializes disruptive technologies.
 
Founded in 2015, PureCycle is opening the feedstock evaluation unit in Lawrence County, OH, where they will calibrate the PP recycling process. The feedstock evaluation unit will begin operating in January 2018 and continue operations after the full-scale plant will open in 2020.
 
"This is a case where a hundred-billion-dollar industry required new technology to meet a compelling, unmet need," said Mike Otworth, CEO of PureCycle Technologies. "Both manufacturers and consumers have signaled a strong preference for recycling plastics, which otherwise pollute oceans, landfills, and other natural places. Until now, recycled PP had limited applications. We're single-handedly removing those limitations and giving companies the choice to use more sustainable, recycled resins."
 
At present, PureCycle says it is the only technology able to meet that demand. The global PP market is valued at more than $80 billion, according to Transparency Market research, and is on track to reach $133.3 billion by 2023.
 
"Our approach to innovation not only includes products and packaging, but technologies that allow us and others to have a positive impact on our environment. This technology, which can remove virtually all contaminants and colors from used plastic, has the capacity to revolutionize the plastics recycling industry by enabling P&G and companies around the world to tap into sources of recycled plastics that deliver nearly identical performance and properties as virgin materials in a broad range of applications," said Kathy Fish, P&G's Chief Technology Officer.
 
"In the U.S. alone, the demand for virgin-quality recycled PP is immense. The Association of Plastics Recyclers (APR) has identified 1 billion pounds of recycled PP demand in North American alone. 720 million pounds of that demand is for 'high-quality' recycled PP," said Steve Alexander, CEO of the APR.
 
While this is a P&G-developed technology, the recycled PP will be widely available for purchase across industries. P&G says this technology demonstrates their commitment to sustainability and helps in achieving P&G's 2020 recycling goals (doubling use of recycled resin in plastic packaging and ensuring 90% of product packaging is either recyclable or programs are in place to create the ability to recycle it). PureCycle technology supports P&G's vision of using 100% recycled or renewable materials and having zero consumer waste go to landfills.