Plastic blends, the search for the perfect compound

24 Apr 2024behind the scenes

How we made our first recycled plastic post-consumption product starting with a research into the most suitable plastic blends.

We were born with plastic, and we have changed with it. If 1969 marked the official birth of Utilplastic, there is another year that marked an important key point in our history. We are talking about 2011, when we made our first product in recycled plastic.

Our company was among the first to look for a way to give new life to plastic, in particular post-consumer plastics. The starting point was above all one: the challenge to find the most suitable plastic mixture, or compound.

The compound is a mixture of heterogeneous plastics, i.e. with very different characteristics. Since those early years of experimentation we chose to work on the reuse of post-consumer plastics, i.e. those coming from the separate collection of household waste. And these are not always of materials that are compatible with each other.

We therefore dived into a long and thorough research work on the mixing, which had to be sufficiently homogeneous and compatible with a proportion of virgin materials. As true pioneers – because this, in fact, is what we were – we conducted studies, feasibility trials and tests in collaboration with public and private companies, and with university laboratories to find the mixture with all the credentials to work. In the end, we did it.

To close the circle, the first product made with our ‘perfect blend’ was a container to collect and recicle the waste. We presented the project to PubliAmbiente, at the time responsible of urban hygiene services in the waste cycle in many Tuscan municipalities, with the aim of giving a signal. For eight years, that is until 2018, our post-consumer recycled plastic container was used for the separate collection of Paper and Packaging by Asm, Cis, Publiambiente ALIA.

Today, things have changed somewhat. Producing recycled plastic items is easier: the compound arrives already mixed and homogenised from the plastics supplier. At the same time, awareness of products made from recycled plastics is also greater.

However, the search is far from over: for us, it certainly never ends! The direction is now pointing towards new frontiers such as bioplastics. In this sense, some innovative products such as our biodegradable brush is already a fact.

More than ten years later, we know that our ‘search for the perfect blend‘ was a key step in getting us where we are today. At the forefront towards the plastic of the future.

In the cover image, our recycling bin made with the “perfect mix”.