Annually many tonnes of solid waste end up in landfills all over New Zealand. Industrially produced wood and plastic waste make up a significant portion of this waste stream. Latest scientific and industrial developments in the field of Wood Plastic Composite (WPC) have presented us with a great opportunity to divert large volumes of wood and plastic waste from the landfill.
There are presently a number of research and commercial organisations who are operating in this field. We aim to build on this locally developed knowledge and expertise and develop a commercially and technically feasible process for local manufacturing of WPC products using the locally generated wood and plastic waste.
This is a collaborative project aimed at recovering wood and plastic waste and up-cycling them into value-added quality WPC products. The project will focus on
Verification and optimisation of technical properties of WPC products using available waste material from New Zealand (at this stage limiting the scope to Auckland)
Planning the establishment of the infrastructure platform for large scale commercialisation
Creation of a stakeholder network and the mechanism to share existing industry knowledge and disseminate newly generated learnings with regards to wood plastic recovery.
The project is managed by KBS-Sustainable Innovation Partners, and is partially funded by Ministry for the Environment through the Waste Minimisation Fund.
