Green light for UK's first plastic recycling park

July 08, 2022

Cheshire West and Chester Council have approved plans for a new Plastic Park which will aim to recycle 367,500 tonnes of plastic every year. Cheshire West and Chester Council have given the green light for the development of a new £165m Plastic Park in Cheshire, which aims to recycle over 350,000 tonnes of plastic annually and help slash carbon emissions on the road to net zero.

The plans for the UK's first Plastic Park were submitted by Peel NRE, an environmentally focused division of development firm Peel L&P, for a site at Protos - the strategic energy and resource hub near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. As such, the facility could potentially link into the carbon capture infrastructure planned for the region.

The companies said the Plastic Park is set to feature innovative processing and treatment technologies to recycle up to 367,500 tonnes of mixed recyclables and plastic every year. The plans also include a hydrogen refueling station.

"It's imperative we deliver creative solutions to the UK's plastic problem," said Richard Barker, development director at Peel NRE. "This project clusters recycling technologies in one place so that we can make the most of a whole range of plastic materials arriving on site, avoiding the need to ship them to different facilities around the region. It'll mean we can cut down on vehicle movements, create 147 new jobs and deliver essential infrastructure to underpin a North West circular economy that's much more sustainable."

He added that the Protos site had been planned "as a holistic destination to support the UK on the road to net zero". "With the recently announced Protos CO2 network, linking to the proposed regional carbon capture infrastructure, the Plastic Park is just another example of forward-thinking development that responds to the dual-challenge of reducing our waste sent to landfill, whilst cutting carbon emissions," he explained.

The new facilities are expected to operate a number of innovative recycling technologies on site, including a Materials Recycling Facility (MRF), which will separate dry and mixed recycling such as glass, paper, cans and card, and two Plastics Recycling Facilities that will organise mixed plastics and pre-sorted plastics.

The site will also boast a Polymer Laminate Recycling Facility, where harder to recycle plastics such as crisp packets and baby food pouches will be heated and broken down into oil to be re-used in the manufacturing industry.

The application is the latest in a run of planning consents at the Protos site. It follows previous approvals for other facilities at the Plastic Park, including the UK's first waste Plastic to Hydrogen facility and a PET recycling plant that will take food and beverage packaging, such as plastic bottles, and recycle them for use in making new packaging products.

The plans for this new facility form part of the North West's wider initiatives to become the first net zero region by 2040.