The "Di-Plast" project is funded by the Interreg NWE Programme and focuses on B2B-supply chains in the largest sectors of plastic demand in NWE: packaging & building. Starting in Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg "Di-Plast" enables companies in NWE to tackle the most important barriers to rPM uptake, thus generating reliable markets with a more stable supply of high-quality rPM. The project creates a deeper, shared understanding for plastic recyclates' economic, production, and environmental benefits.
The Wuppertal Institute is leading the project and will pursue various activities with the project partners achieves the following goals and milestones:
- create an uptake toolkit with six tools for uptake improvement
- test and validate the tools in four pilots with 12 companies to achieve 4 kilotonnes uptake of rPM in total
- create an Uptake Accelerator Programme and install five uptake managers to support 90 companies in NWE to use secondary plastics effectively, and to realise an uptake of 18 kilotonnes rPM in total
- install and promote lasting outreach and support across NWE to create more uptake managers, thus more support and more uptake
Background to this project is the very low use of recycled plastic material in North-West Europe's plastics processing industries Valuable material is hence lost forever through incineration, export or landfill. Moreover, it implies high dependence on volatile, unstable and insecure virgin material markets (i.e. petro-chemicals) for plastics processing companies. High consumption of virgin material also results in huge externalities and thus a heavy burden on nature, the environment and human health, e.g. due to harmful emissions and marine litter.