Historically, CK Polymers have been known in the plastic recycling industry as a trader of recycled plastics, but in reality this has not been the case for many years. The term “trader” implies that the company do not see or handle the materials or add value to them in anyway.

CK Polymers are committed to the environment and as part of its business activities, aim to facilitate and grow the recycling of UK derived plastic waste to divert as much plastic waste away from landfill as possible.

How do CK Polymers promote plastic recycling?

Whilst CK Polymers have owned and run a successful closed loop plastic recycling facility in Scotland since 2001, recycling cable housings from the telecommunications industry, setting up new facilities across the country to replicate this service would prove time consuming and expensive (recycling equipment is not cheap),

Expanding the throughput at the existing site would mean transporting plastic waste over large distances, which is neither viable financially or environmentally.

Therefore CK Polymers are taking a multi-pronged approach to increase the amount of UK derived plastic waste that gets recycled either here in the UK or abroad. Hence CK Polymers are a promoter of plastic recycling or recycling angel .

CK Polymers Ltd are improving plastic recycling in the UK, not only by investing in our own plastic recycling facilities but also by helping smaller plastic recycling companies to develop and grow. Some of the ways that we are facilitating plastic recycling include:-

Development of in-house recycling facilities

We are currently investing in our closed loop recycling plant in Scotland to increase the flexibility in the materials it is able to process. This will mean being able to offer a wider range of services in the Scottish and English borders area.

We are also investing in granulation, blending and compounding equipment at our Lincolnshire distribution centre. This will mean adding more value to the materials that we distribute and increases the volume of recycling happening in the UK rather than being distributed out of the country to be recycled.

Investment in Packaging Waste Recycling

Whilst the preference would be to recycle the UK’s packaging waste in the UK itself, the reality is that there just isn’t the infrastructure or capacity in the UK to deal with all of the UK’s plastic packaging waste.

The other option is to export these materials to utilise capacity elsewhere in the world. A recent study by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), suggested that it is more beneficial environmentally to export these materials for recycling than to end them to landfill in the UK.

CK Polymers fully support the findings of this study and are accredited for the exportation of plastic packaging waste and for the issue and sale of Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERN’s).

The revenue from the sale of these PERN’s is then invested back into raising awarenoess of the need to recycle plastic packaging waste and to improve collection facilities across the UK.

Expanding our Recycling Partner Network

One way that CK Polymers is looking to improve localised collection facilities for all types of plastic waste across the UK is by the expansion of its network of “trusted recycling partners”.

By passing on leads received from our website to our recycling partners and helping them to more easily distribute the plastics they have recycled we are encouraging these companies to improve the quality of the materials recycled and to enhance their collection facilities.

For more information please see our section on trusted recycling partners.

Investment in CKP Technical Services

Improving quality of rGrade (recycled) plastic raw materials that come out of the waste stream is fundamental to the development of plastic recycling. The better the quality, the easier it is for the plastic to be recycled and thus our investment in improving quality further facilitates plastic recycling.

Since October 2007 we have been developing our material identification and testing facilities under the guise of CKP Technical Services.

Using the latest Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) spectrometry technology we are able to quickly, easily and safely identify different plastic types from the plastic waste stream. By offering a plastic identification service to our suppliers and recycling partners we are able to reduce the number of cases of material cross contamination during the recycling process.

For more information see CKP Technical Services.

Finding / Developing New Markets

Another fundamental element to increasing plastic recycling in the UK is developing markets to make use of the plastics being recycled.

The Far East (especially China) is one of the biggest markets for recycled plastics in the world. Since 2006 we have been developing our sales and distribution operation in Hong Kong to take advanteg of this.

2008 has also been an exciting time for the company in Europe, expanding its customer base there considerably after employing the services of Eric Misonne of Misco as our agent.