South west College has now concluded with the Re:Solve project which has ran since February 2022.

The project consortium consisted of South West College, University Of Ulster, and Granville Ecopark; and was funded by the Ecosurety Exploration Fund (EEF); which invests £1 million in projects that could reduce the environmental impact of packaging, batteries or EEE through innovation or research in the UK. Recently, project findings were published and have been made openly accessible to the public.

The article entitled, “Separation and Characterization of Plastic Waste Packaging Contaminated with Food Residues” was published in the MDPI journal, polymers as part of a special issue “Decarbonization of Plastics”. The article is openly accessible and can be read online here: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360...

The paper presents the development of a novel processing technology to tackle hard-to-recycle plastic packaging waste contaminated with food residues. To assess this technology, spectroscopic, thermal, and calorimetric characterisations of the obtained fractions have been conducted.

For more details on the project please take a look at Ecosurety’s webpage on the Re:Solve project:

https://www.ecosurety.com/impact/innovation/resolve/