The Dutch company Ioniqa is close to producing fully transparent PET-bottles from old PET-bottles and fleeces. They are hereby, in their own way, contributing to a more circular economy. Ioniqa is a spin-off from the Eindhoven University of Technology and the Dutch Polymer Institute (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). Circular PET Recycling Ioniqa is considered a game changer by taking out the colorant and produce virgin PET raw materials at competitive price levels. Ioniqa is launching a novel circular recycling process for infinite recycling of PET bottles, textiles and carpets infinitely. This is how the high-tech chemical company ‘close the loop’. Platform Technology Ioniqa’s Magnetic Smart Materials and Separation Process is a platform technology. The current scaling up of Ioniqa’s novel technology is focussed on PET plastics only but could be applied in the future to other plastics and organic materials as well. Ioniqa foresees that also fields like Food (for instance in separation processes) and bio-medical applications (or instance in drug delivery) could also benefit from it. Circular Solution Ioniqa looked at the major challenge when launching its novel patented technology: how to solve this ‘problem’ using Ioniqa’s Magnetic Smart Processes and look at PET (plastic) waste streams as a source for raw materials? Can we even produce high quality new PET by recycling any type of PET-waste and close the loop for PET (plastics)? Ioniqa is, in their own words, solving two problems at the same time:
- Reducing the amount of PET-waste
- Becoming less dependent on scarce resources.