MOSCOW (MRC) -- Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry has confirmed an investment of USD3.5 million in Montreal-based specialty recycling company Polystyvert through Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), said Canpasrics.
This is the second SDTC investment in Polystyvert and part of a what the government calls a “continuing collaboration” that is helping the company become a leader in the recycling of widely used synthetic plastics. SDTC is a foundation created by the federal government to fund new clean technologies.
Polystyvert will use the investment to complete the scale-up of its patented recycling technology to enable the full circular economy of polystyrene, reducing greenhouse emissions and helping protect the environment. “Polystyrene materials, such as some food packaging, are rarely recycled or accepted in curbside collection programs – they are often incinerated or end up in landfills or, even worse, in our oceans and other natural areas, where these nonbiodegradable materials can cause major harm,” the government said in a news release. “They can and should be recovered and kept out of the environment, and Polystyvert is making a valuable contribution to the circular economy through its advanced recycling technology."
Polystyvert has developed a dissolution and purification process that accepts a wide range of recovered styrene plastics and removes contaminants, producing recycled polystyrene resins that can be used in many new products, from food containers to building materials.
As it was written earlier, Polystyvert has partnered with styrenics supplier Ineos Styrolution to convert post-consumer polystyrene (PS) into a new, high-quality, PS raw material resin.
Polystyvert has closed a round of funding to facilitate the development of a full-scale polystyrene (PS) recycling plant. The round includes new investor BEWI Group, a European provider of packaging, components, and insulation solutions, and said to be one of the largest integrated expandable PS (EPS) producers in Europe with an annual EPS production capacity of 200,000 tons, as well as new private investors.
Founded in 2011, Polystyvert has developed a low-carbon-footprint process to recycle polystyrene based on a dissolution technology. Once dissolved, the process can mechanically and chemically separate contaminants and additives – including a wide range of hard-to-remove contaminants such as pigments and brominated flame-retardants – before finally separating the original polymer from the solvent. The end-product is then a cleaned polymer that can be used as new raw material resin again, to manufacture various categories of PS products, including food-grade applications.
MRC