CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN PRACTICE
“With Nordic Plastic Recycling we take responsibility for the recycling of our products. The long-term goal is to be able to offer all our customers access to circular economy in practice,” says Dag Eirik Thomassen, CEO of Cipax in Norway.
PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY
In 2016, Cipax became a partner in a Norwegian cooperation project that is now being marketed under the name Nordic Plastic Recycling. The business is run together with colleagues in the sector and aims to manage the take-back of the companies' own products and increase the recycling of plastic materials. For Cipax, this initially involves taking care of the boats it manufactures and markets under the Pioner and Steady brands, once they have reached their end of life.
“We want to take control of the entire value chain, it is our responsibility as a producer and also part of our long-term sustainability work. Our products are 100% recyclable, but the infrastructure, technology and knowledge to take them back and recycle them is not yet in place. Through Nordic Plastic Recycling, we will change that,” says Dag Eirik.
TAKE-BACK OF BOATS
To make it easy for customers to return their boats for recycling, Cipax is working to expand its network of partners in order to get closer to its customers in terms of geography. But there are high demands on these partners' ability to separate parts into the right fractions. “It is important that this expertise is available in our partners, because the biggest challenge today is the access to recycled material in a high and consistent quality,” Dag Eirik explains.
In the recycling process at Nordic Plastic Recycling, the recovered material is sorted into two different fractions with separate production lines. “The material that is of such a high quality that we can reuse it in our own production of rotational moulded products has a separate line. Fraction number two contains discarded products with other recyclable materials that we can use for other production methods. Of course, we have very high quality requirements and carry out continuous quality tests on the recycled material before it can be used in production again.”
SUSTAINABILITY IN EVERYTHING WE DO
The customers of tomorrow will not be satisfied with a product made from a material that is 100% recyclable. They will also want to know that circularity continues when the product has reached the end of its life. “They want to be certain that end-of-life items are taken back by us, the producers, and reintroduced into the circular economy. Customers expect us to complete the circle,” Dag Eirik says and continues:
“As producers, it's important for us to play an active role in the entire product lifecycle and consider sustainability in everything we do – from product design to production and take-back. With new environmental directives from the EU coming into force, producer responsibility will be further increased in the future, and through the activities of Nordic Plastic Recycling, we have positioned ourselves at the forefront of this process.”