Resource management leader Veolia UK, has demonstrated its strategic commitment to the plastics economy by acquiring manufacturing assets in East London which will unlock the complete supply chain for manufacturing plastic bottles from recycled material.
Veolia will now be able to offer the complete range of services from collection of raw feedstock (waste plastic bottles) direct from people’s homes or businesses, through all the recycling steps, and back to food grade pellets ready to be blown into new plastic milk bottles.
The move will boost the UK’s domestic recycling capability, create 30 permanent jobs and enable Veolia to make and sell a high value product from the 200 million plastic milk bottles it collects annually.
Currently around 13 billion soft drinks, water and milk bottles are discarded each year and globally the environmental costs are on the increase. By recycling bottles to produce new food-grade quality plastic, Veolia will make plastic more sustainable and maintain lower costs for local councils.
Estelle Brachlianoff, Senior Executive Vice President Veolia UK and Ireland said, "We are very interested to collaborate in this space since co-operation with the manufacturing sector, the people actually making things from recovered materials, is essential in order to be successful for the long term.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: “I am determined to redouble efforts to increase the amount London recycles so I am delighted that Veolia has purchased this important facility. This plant recycles all of the capital’s empty milk bottles – a mountain of waste that would otherwise have been sent to landfill. This is good news for London and good news for the environment.”
“This is a great opportunity to work in tandem with our Rainham plastic recycling facility to turn the high density polyethylene (HDPE) milk bottles back into bottles and we are excited at mastering the full supply chain by moving into this type of manufacturing. This shows once again Veolia’s commitment to investment in the UK.”
The new business will produce around 10,000 tonnes of high quality food grade HDPE pellets annually. Recycling this material requires 75% less energy to make a plastic bottle than using ‘virgin’ materials, and this equates to conserving enough energy to power around 20,000 homes and saving 10,000 tpa of carbon emissions. The move also complements Veolia’s recent commitment as a Core Partner to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s campaign to support the Plastics Economy.
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About Veolia UK
We are committed to protecting the environment and improving the lives of the communities in which we operate and have been awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development and received a Four Star rating in Business in the Community’s Corporate Responsibility Index for 2015. For more information visit us at www.veolia.co.uk or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/veoliauk.
Veolia group
Veolia group is the global leader in optimised resource management. With over 174 000 employees worldwide, the Group designs and provides water, waste and energy management solutions that contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. Through its three complementary business activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, preserve available resources, and to replenish them.
In 2015, the Veolia group supplied 100 million people with drinking water and 63 million people with wastewater service, produced 63 million megawatt hours of energy and converted 42.9 million metric tons of waste into new materials and energy. Veolia Environnement (listed on Paris Euronext: VIE) recorded consolidated revenue of €25 billion in 2015. www.veolia.com
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