Mobilizing Agenda for Sustainable Plastics

The RECICLA+ project is part of the Sustainable Plastics project led by Logoplaste Innovation LAB under the Mobilizing Agendas (PRR) for Sustainable Plastics.

Objectives

• Promotion of a Circular Economy for plastic coffee capsules in Portugal, creating new products with plastic waste and valuing coffee grounds;
• Investigation of the properties of the different materials that make up the capsules;
• Innovation: designing an eco-friendly coffee capsule, favoring end-of-life recyclability;
• Collection, sorting, and recovery of single-use plastic waste;
• Acting in favor of sustainability as a strategic pillar.

Expected results

• Creation of a mass national post-consumer capsule collection system;
• Construction of a sharing economy model (reverse logistics) regarding the transport of this waste;
• Separation of the different capsules collected from the market by type of material;
• Manufacture of plastic items (non-food) with the maximization of % incorporation of this waste;
• Manufacture of liquid biofertilizers directly from coffee grounds, a product in great demand and in which Portugal is an importer;
• The conception of an eco-friendly coffee capsule – Design in favor of recycling/sustainable design;
• Certification of new products before RECYCLASS, in order to find the best score in their recyclability. By overcoming these challenges, we will thus be able to develop mechanisms to recover urban waste from coffee capsules, preventing them from being sent to landfills.