Creative Plastics, in partnership with Unilever, has developed a brand-new pigment that allows for black coloured bottles to be recycled. This “detectable” black pigment technology, which will be used in the manufacture of bottles for some of Unilever’s top brands, is at the cutting-edge for the plastic industry and has the potential to prevent thousands of tons of plastic from being wasted annually.

Recycling black coloured plastic has always been a notoriously tricky problem for the recycling industry. At recycling facilities, light is bounced of plastic infeed to determine its colour and subsequently sort it. Since black plastic absorbs this light, the sensors at these facilities are unable to identify black plastic leading to it ultimately being sent to landfills. The new “detectable” pigment solves for this problem, allowing for a significantly more sustainable life cycle for black plastic.

Labelled a “eureka moment” for the industry by Richard Kirkman, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Veolia, a large European recycler, this technology has already been commercialized by Creative.

“We are incredibly excited by this development and would like to congratulate our team and our partners for making it a reality. At Creative, we strive to be leaders in the area of sustainability and this is a great example of some of the work we are doing in this space. We look forward to announcing more such wins in the future. ” said Vinay Agarwal, Director at Creative.