Close the Loop installs new recycling line

Close the Loop (CtL) has a “Zero waste to landfill” promise, which drives the company to help its customers achieve sustainability goals and participate in the circular economy.

The circular economy makes the most of valuable resources, transforming items that would otherwise be wasted into useful commodities that can be returned to the supply chain.

Jessica Ansell, CtL Marketing Manager, said CtL’s aim is to make the process accessible and encourage people and companies to recover and recycle difficult products.

CtL has a number of recycling lines, the majority of which revolve around the challenging area of recycling soft plastics. To protect products from deterioration, soft plastic packaging contains multiple different types of plastic joined together in thin layers. At end of life, this creates issues as these materials cannot be separated, leading to a low grade of recycling feedstock with limited use.

The company specialises in recycling imaging products, ink and toner cartridges, bottles and the toner itself. It comes as a surprise to many people that toner powder is actually a finely ground plastic. Close to 100 million cartridges have been recycled over the past 20 years in Australia alone. Though the number is impressive, many still end up in landfill. The recycled raw material is supplied back to a number of industry partners and cartridges are returned to the original supplier for remanufacturing. CtL also manufactures recycled products such as mailing satchels and horticulture bags.

The company also takes large volumes of post-consumer mixed soft plastics as a feedstock for its asphalt additive product, TonerPlas, and its recycled plastic injection-moulding resin, rFlex. TonerPlas improves the longevity of roads and has been used in resurfacing projects across Australia including the Monash and M80 freeway upgrades in Victoria.

CtL has recently installed a Genox recycling line from Applied Machinery at its Somerton plant which will handle a range of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) materials including bottles, retail displays, tubs and crates. The end product called ‘flake’ will be supplied as a commodity to plastic trading companies — which in turn may be washed and turned back into bottles.

The line includes a feeding platform, conveyor with metal detector, a single shaft shredder and granulator. All of the extraction along the line includes ‘de-dusting’, which removes dust/dirt/fines from the material as it progresses along the line, ensuring the safety and health of the operators.

The dustproofing also increases the life of the motors and a zig zag (ZZ) classifier separates the plastic from paper labels and other fines.

“The installation of our new line was trouble-free; the Applied team were there to deal with any unforeseen issue. And with Genox we have the reassurance that we are buying equipment that features the very latest technology and features,” said Steve Morriss, Head of Circular Economy, CtL.

Founded in 2000, the company now has group facilities in the US, Europe and New Zealand. After successfully merging with OF Packaging, it listed on the ASX in 2021 and was awarded the “IPO of the year”.

Morriss said that with the recent acquisition of another recycling company in the US, the Close the Loop Group will continue to expand and remain at the forefront of circular thinking. People are realising that the world has finite resources and there needs to be a huge effort by all aspects of society to keep non-renewable resources in circulation for longer.

“For me this is not a job, it’s my life and my passion: to work with like-minded people, companies and government at all levels to transition to a circular economy,” Morriss said.

Genox is a combination of the words “Generating Oxygen”, and Applied Machinery is the sole Australian distributor for Genox Recycling Technology.