The first plastic recycling park in the UK has been given the green light, with councillors at Cheshire West and Chester approving plans for the £165 million project, which will include innovating treatment and processing technologies to boost the recycling of 367,500 tonnes of plastic and mixed recyclables annually.
Peel PRE now intends to work with potential operators to get going with onsite construction at Protos, the energy and resource hub just outside Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.
The scheme itself, which is expected to create 147 new jobs, will also see a hydrogen refuelling station developed onsite.
Approval for the project follows previous others for facilities at the Plastic Park, including a PET recycling plant and the UK’s first plastic to hydrogen facility. It forms part of plans for the north-west to become the first net zero region in the country by 2040.
Richard Barker, development director at Peel NRE, commented on the news, saying: “It’s imperative we deliver creative solutions to the UK’s plastic problem.
“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. We’ve planned Protos 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 dual-challenge of reducing our waste sent to landfill, whilst cutting carbon emissions.”
The CO2 network has the potential to capture 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year, with future phases of this particular project increasing capacity to more than 1.2 million tonnes.
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