Plastic converted into pure raw material
Start-up OBBOTEC has built an innovative demonstration installation for plastic recycling in Plant One in the Rotterdam Botlek: Selectieve Plastic Extractie (SPEX). In the installation, plastics, including plastic foils, are processed into pure new raw material with the aid of an innovative solvent. Around 99% of the plastic raw material that remains is so pure that it can be used again for packaging.
Recycling Lithum-lon batteries
Numbers of electric vehicles are increasing, which also means a considerable increase in both worldwide demand for Lithium-Ion batteries and the number of discarded batteries. TES, one of the world's largest companies in the recycling of batteries and electronic waste, recycles batteries of electric vehicles in the port of Rotterdam. It's the first factory for recycling Lithium-Ion batteries in the Netherlands.
The Port of Rotterdam Authority collaborates with many regional and chain partners on the development of new, circular value chains, around chemical recycling of plastic and recycling of batteries, for instance. The port is also home to companies that are specialised in circularity or that apply circularity in their business operations. Many of these companies are scale-ups. Attracting and facilitating promising scale-ups and/or technologies is therefore of great importance to the renewal of the industry complex in coming years.
Some things that are already happening in concrete terms in the port:
For example: the raw materials we need to produce wind turbines are scarce, but wind turbines are precisely what we need to achieve the climate goals. So if we don't commit seriously to the raw materials transition, the energy transition also threatens to land in an impasse.
So in the Netherlands, our goal is to have a circular economy by 2050. That means that so many products and raw materials are reused, that hardly any waste is generated.
As the largest port in Europe and raw materials cluster in the Netherlands, we can contribute significantly to the raw materials transition.
It requires an integrated approach and collaboration of parties in the port and the port industrial complex through the entire production: the extraction and reprocessing of raw materials, product design, production process, repairs, reuse and recycling. And it's not only waste that we put into production process again. It's biomass, hydrogen and CO₂ as well.
Step 7
Circularity
The energy transition is on the agenda. But is the raw materials transition up there too? The latter may seem less urgent, but nothing could be further from the truth. As earlier described: in the extraction of virgin raw materials, there is often considerable damage done to the environment, raw materials are finite and materials currently often end up in the environment or the atmosphere, which causes damage.
Start-up OBBOTEC has built an innovative demonstration installation for plastic recycling in Plant One in the Rotterdam Botlek: Selectieve Plastic Extractie (SPEX). In the installation, plastics, including plastic foils, are processed into pure new raw material with the aid of an innovative solvent. Around 99% of the plastic raw material that remains is so pure that it can be used again for packaging.
Plastic converted into pure rawmaterial
Numbers of electric vehicles are increasing, which also means a considerable increase in both worldwide demand for Lithium-Ion batteries and the number of discarded batteries. TES, one of the world's largest companies in the recycling of batteries and electronic waste, recycles batteries of electric vehicles in the port of Rotterdam. It's the first factory for recycling Lithium-Ion batteries in the Netherlands.
RecyclingLithum-lonbatteries
The Port of Rotterdam Authority collaborates with many regional and chain partners on the development of new, circular value chains, around chemical recycling of plastic and recycling of batteries, for instance. The port is also home to companies that are specialised in circularity or that apply circularity in their business operations. Many of these companies are scale-ups. Attracting and facilitating promising scale-ups and/or technologies is therefore of great importance to the renewal of the industry complex in coming years.
Some things that are already happening in concrete terms in the port:
For example: the raw materials we need to produce wind turbines are scarce, but wind turbines are precisely what we need to achieve the climate goals. So if we don't commit seriously to the raw materials transition, the energy transition also threatens to land in an impasse.
So in the Netherlands, our goal is to have a circular economy by 2050. That means that so many products and raw materials are reused, that hardly any waste is generated.
As the largest port in Europe and raw materials cluster in the Netherlands, we can contribute significantly to the raw materials transition.
It requires an integrated approach and collaboration of parties in the port and the port industrial complex through the entire production: the extraction and reprocessing of raw materials, product design, production process, repairs, reuse and recycling. And it's not only waste that we put into production process again. It's biomass, hydrogen and CO₂ as well.
The energy transition is on the agenda. But is the raw materials transition up there too? The latter may seem less urgent, but nothing could be further from the truth. As earlier described: in the extraction of virgin raw materials, there is often considerable damage done to the environment, raw materials are finite and materials currently often end up in the environment or the atmosphere, which causes damage.
Step 7