New energy saving project for plastics

A programme to promote energy saving in the plastics processing industry has been established by the UK’s Faraday Plastics and Polymers Partnership with partners from other European countries. The Recipe programme (standing for Reduced Energy Consumption in Plastics Engineering) is being funded for three years by the European Commission’s Intelligent Energy – Europe programme. The project is being administered for Faraday Plastics by Rapra Technology.

Project leader Rebecca Dolbey of Rapra said: “The overall objective of the proposed action is to provide the European plastics processing industry with the knowledge, justification and tools required to reduce energy consumption, through the implementation of best practice, and the adoption of new technology.” Rising electricity and gas prices have brought energy consumption into focus, but there is currently a tendency to view energy costs as fixed overheads, according to the project team. A key aim will be to demonstrate that energy purchase should be considered as a variable materials cost, with substantial potential for reductions to be made. Other partners in the project are the BPF (UK), Fraunhofer Institut fuer Chemische Technologie (Germany), Aimplas (Spain), Ascamm+ (Spain), Danish Technological Institute (Denmark), CRIF-Wallonie (Belgium).