Plastic. Climate. Future.

On the 13-14th of October, for the first time the entire PCF Team attended the Annual Conference of Chemical Recycling Europe (CRE), which was focusing on the Circular Economy and how to achieve circularity with plastics.
In this episode, we interviewed some of the guests: Maëlys Makotta from EuPC; Jasper Munier from Clariter; Jan Hommen and Laszlo Szekely from TOMRA; Phil Brown from Circularise; Fabian Loske from Sphera, and Adela Putinelu from Plastic Energy.

We asked them about the insights, reflections and of course, our plastic climate future topics, that were discussed during the conference. So make sure not to miss this one!

Find out more about Chemical Recycling Europe: https://www.chemicalrecyclingeurope.eu/

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Despite known for having a “bad” reputation in society, plastic is and will continue being part of our daily lives and economy. Hence, it is important to find sustainable strategies for avoiding the negative consequences and still being able to profit from the benefits of plastics.

In this podcast episode, we had the amazing opportunity to speak to Virginia Janssens who is the managing director of Plastics Europe. As an association, they focus on advocacy, regulation, technical expertise, and also help to set scenarios to make the plastic industry sustainable and circular.

Together with Virginia, we discussed the importance of fostering the dialogue between all the stakeholders and gathering science-based facts.

Find out more about Plastics Europe: https://plasticseurope.org/

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Have you wondered how to recycle dirty plastic packaging? Meet Samantha, an aspiring organic chemist who is also the co-founder of a start-up company that depolymerizes plastics, DePoly.

Together with two other PhD students, they combined their different expertise to develop sustainable and simple solutions for PET recycling.

We also talked about chemical recycling, the current bottlenecks, and how their chemical recycling method differs from other processes

Find out more about DePoly: https://www.depoly.co/

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Have you thought of converting plastic waste into affordable building materials?

In this podcast, we invited Kidus, the CEO and Co-founder of a Nairobi-Based start-up that creates building materials from plastic, KUBIK, Inc. As a son of Ethiopia, Kidus tells us how his memorable childhood experiences got slowly disrupted by the adverse effects of urbanization, which motivated him to act and look into ways how to valorize plastic waste.

KUBIK’s mission is grounded in transforming society by taking care of the environment. They focus on this simple existential problem, and convert plastic waste, as a problematic low-cost material, into a cheaper alternative for building materials.

We also spoke with Kidus about the general situation of plastic waste, circularity and problems caused by urbanization in Africa.

Find out more about KUBIK: https://www.buildkubik.com/ 

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Imagine yourself launching a biobased plastic start-up company by starting the experiment from your own kitchen, isn’t it cool?
Jessica Farda is the co-founder of Noriware. Her fascination for algae-based materials was born when she went to Mexico for vacation and saw a lot of algae on the beach. Then, it develops into an idea to create an algae-based packaging material and made her learn about its potential as a sustainable and circular material resource. 

Without any scientific background in chemistry or polymers, she did her own research and performed experiments at home in her own kitchen. By accident, she discovered a process for making plastics. That’s when she decided to move out of the kitchen and start collaborating with the ETH in Zurich.

Find out more about Noriware: www.noriware.com 

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They saw the plastic waste in the Jordanian sea increasing, and did not only stay silent..
In this episode, we have our first guest from the Middle East, Beisan AlSharif.

Beisan is a marine enthusiast with a passion for diving and the environment. During the pandemic, she found a traumatizing amount of waste underwater caused by the skyrocketing plastic usage. This then led her to co-found Project Sea, to extend her passion for scuba diving.

Project Sea aims to change the culture of littering and waste disposal by organizing monthly diving clean-up events in Jordan. They also educate the public by arranging interactive lectures, campaigns, and collaboration with local brands.

We also discussed how we often turn our eyes to Europe and sometimes forget that ocean plastic is a global and wider problem. We gained a new perspective from Beisan about what the situation is like in Jordan.

Find out more about Project Sea: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisprojectsea/

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