Last weekend the Polish minister Jadwiga Emilewicz, the Dutch ambassador Ron van Dartel and director of environmental inspection Paweł Ciecko officially opened the new location of Van Werven in Poland. With this new location, Van Werven is increasing its plastic recycling capacity by twenty-five percent.
"That means a total of 150 million kilos of recyclate per year", says Ton van der Giessen, managing director. The initiative is a collaboration between Van Werven Plastic Recycling and Plastic Worx from Poland. From the start of the plastic recycling activities in 2006, Van Werven has been using the services of Plastic Worx. The location focuses mainly on input from Germany, but will, as the market in Poland grows, also process plastic waste from Poland. Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz: "Currently, 10% of the plastic is recycled in Poland. Our goal is 60% recycling. With their initiative in Poland, Van Werven offers an important contribution to achieving this.” To realize an optimal recycling process, the experience gained in past years has been used to design the buildings and installations. Van Werven is very enthusiastic about the end result: "It is nice to see how our sketches from ‘home’ have now become reality in Poland," says Ton van der Giessen.
European circular objectives
Fifty employees work at the plant every day to sort the plastics and process them into a secondary, high-quality raw material. With the arrival of this new location, Van Werven has six plants where plastic is recycled. The company started twelve years ago in the Netherlands and is now also active in Belgium, England, Ireland and Sweden. In this way Van Werven gives substance to his vision of closing the cycle locally as much as possible. This contributes to the European objective of no longer incinerating or dumping plastic waste, but applying it in a circular fashion. Ambassador Ron van Dartel: "This company is an example of a cooperation between the Netherlands and Poland with which an important contribution is made to the realization of the European circular objectives."
Read more here about the special location where the three-hectare complex was built and watch the compilation video of the construction.
