Recycling and upcycling
As sustainability becomes paramount, reusing waste streams and designing for recycling become vital business advantages.
Our experts can help your business on the journey to sustainable material use.
Increasingly, international retailers require suppliers to address the sustainability of their products by using renewable resources or collecting production waste and recycling it.
We can support your selection of more sustainable solutions, including helping with your choice of biodegradable or bio-based materials, the redesign and manufacturing associated with materials substitution, and the recycling and potentially upcycling of waste materials.
Critical mass in re- and upcycling
Business opportunity
Often a waste stream by itself is too small or too unreliable to justify an investment in recycling equipment, so it is important to compile waste materials which require the same treatment.
What are we doing
We are preparing a waste questionnaire for New Zealand companies. The data will be evaluated for recycling opportunities.
Result
The data will give recyclers the confidence to know how big the available feedstock (critical mass) is and de-risk the commercial implementation of their business ideas.
Contaminated polymer purification to enable recycling
Business opportunity
As a by-product of their process, our customer produced a large volume of polymer contaminated with glass, which was being sent to landfill.
What we did
We identified techniques used overseas for purification of this polymer and conducted purification trials on the customer’s feedstock material. These trials produced a pure material that could be recycled.
Result
The customer is currently undertaking a market validation and economic feasibility study. Once implemented the process will divert 1000 tonnes of waste from landfill per annum.
Extracting valuable minerals from industrial waste
Business opportunity
Our customer is developing a process for extracting valuable minerals from industrial waste streams.
What we did
We provided assistance developing chemical processes to economically precipitate pure mineral salts from the waste.
Result
The customer is now able to extract a greater proportion of the mineral salts from the waste, resulting in a more economically feasible and environmentally friendly process. This has enabled them to pursue the development of a pilot plant.
Mineral Ore Processing
Business Challenge
Mineral ore processing comes with high temperatures and reactive gases leading to soaring energy costs and hazardous conditions.
What we did
We studied the conversion of the ore to better understand the different processing scenarios.
Business outcome
Processing conditions were optimised, helping to improve efficiency, decrease costs and reduce hazards.