Greening kitchen sinks and worktops: exploiting industrial symbiosis to produce acrylic mineral composites from recycled and tracked production waste in a replicable circular value chain

Introduction

LIFE GREEN COMPOSITE aims to solve current barriers to fully greening the production of mineral composite sinks, by demonstrating at pilot and industrial scale circular solutions for the reuse of waste from acrylic mineral composites and the production of such composites with secondary raw materials. It will do so with a focus on kitchen furniture, such as sinks and worktops; however, solutions are paradigmatic for and can be replicated in other products made from acrylic mineral composites.

Current Challenges

Recycling of composites is to date a complicated process, and this applies even more for mineral-filled composite. At the same time, the use of recycled materials in the manufacturing of acrylic mineral composites is still limited due to the complex processing techniques that are very dependent on extremely pure materials intimately linked together.

Sinks manufacturing in Europe consumes yearly 21,000 tons of monomer, polymer, and quartz, and is responsible for landfilling of 3,600 tons of mineral waste heavily polluted by polymers.

Industrial Symbiosis

Partners will engage in an industrial symbiosis, through which Delta’s waste becomes the solution to improve the performance of recycled composite kitchen tops and other panels produced by Gees.

Making use of:

1. S-o-A,
2. adapted and tested grinding and coating technologies,
3. new products’ design,
4. new dispersion formulations,
5. a new process for in-house energy-efficient conversion of MMA into PMMA by prepolymerisation,
6. and the involvement of other actors in the value chain,

the project expects to:

• recycle 100% of Delta’s annual sink waste,
• enable production and marketing of a green sink production line fully made of recycled materials,
• and bring to market newly designed normal and solid colour composite worktops with improved performance.

Consumer Engagement

B2B customers will be actively engaged to raise awareness amongst consumers on sustainable purchase choices and will be involved in a feasibility study for the recovery of end-of-life post-consumer sinks.