Cedo Recycling: working together for a world without waste

But where does all that waste go?

Every Dutch person produces almost 51 kilograms of plastic packaging waste each year.

Households collect around 50%-60% of this using a PMD (Plastic, Metal, Drinks Cartons) bag (source). How often these bags are collected varies from municipality to municipality. The bags then go to a sorting centre to separate the various materials, including packaging films. Many films have been used for food packaging, so they are often contaminated with residues that require cleaning.

It makes sense to reuse or recycle commonly used materials, which helps to reduce the amount of waste and ensures less plastic ends up in the environment. It also means we need to burn less plastic and fewer emissions occur. Recycling helps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn reduces the impact on the environment.

For over 40 years from our base in Geleen

We have been committed to reducing plastic waste in the environment

Cedo Recycling believes that reuse and recycling are crucial for the sustainable use of plastic and reducing the amount of plastic waste in the environment. That is why we challenge ourselves every day to reduce our impact on the world around us. Our ultimate goal is to create a circular economy for materials: a world where waste no longer exists.

What many people see as waste, we at Cedo see as valuable raw material

At Cedo, we recycle 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year. From the small grains left over after the recycling process, we make new products such as rubbish bags. Thousands of consumers across Europe use our products to keep their homes and offices clean, safe and tidy on a daily basis

Cedo in Geleen

One of the leading recycling centres in Europe

In order to reduce the impact on our environment, we always deal with plastics responsibly. The seed for this was planted during the 1973 oil crisis. As we wanted to become independent of fossil fuels we started our own recycling business in the late ‘70s.

For over 40 years, Cedo has operated one of the leading recycling centres for flexible plastic packaging film, collected mainly from households in the Netherlands and two regions in neighbouring countries. In Geleen, we process more than 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste into granules (recyclate) every year, that we can then use to produce rubbish sacks at our factories in Poland and the UK. These bags are sold in supermarkets throught Europe including the Netherlands.

Cedo Recycling

Innovative and progressive in recycling

Together with our customers, we ensure that the use of recycled plastic in all our products is increasing year on year. Thanks to our Eco design process, we always choose the right recycled or recyclable materials for the rubbish sacks that we produce – like those from our Good Karma line.

Cedo was the first flexible film recycler to sort flexible film by plastic type. We also developed a better washing process, which allows us to remove more contaminants attached to the flexible film, as well as installing a double filtration system to exclude non-melted materials and foreign plastics from the recyclate.

Turning waste into renewable raw materials

Recycling by Cedo:

Turning waste into renewable raw materials

People around the world are still throwing away ever increasing quantities of plastic packaging, which could pollute land, rivers, beaches, oceans and nature. It is vital for the environment that we reduce the amount of plastic waste. Or better still, ensure that waste no longer exists. The latter seems like a pipe dream for now, but as a society we can do as much as possible to convert waste into renewable raw materials, in order to make new products out of it.

At Cedo, we naturally share the desire to reduce our impact on the climate and recycle more plastic waste. Plastic is a valuable resource that we can reuse more effectively throughout our society, not just in the Netherlands, but across Europe and around the world. As a leading recycling company, we are therefore doing everything we can to further expand the processing and production capacity of our European recycling centre.

A cleaner Earth, that's what we are committed to every day

Cedo pays great attention to reducing our impact on the environment in all our production processes and strives to get better in this every day. We are happy to take responsibility for contributing to a cleaner earth. And take measures to reduce the burden on the environment in the process.

New recycling technology

Better every day

But it is not just about expanding capacity. It is also important to embrace new recycling technology so that we can recycle films that are difficult to recycle or heavily contaminated. Recycling a tonne of plastic saves an amount of energy that is equivalent to the annual energy consumption of two people. In addition, every tonne of recycled plastic can reduce oil consumption by over 16 barrels (source). Reduced oil consumption leads in turn to reduced emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases when producing new plastics. Finally, fewer plastics in landfill globally means reduced emissions of common landfill gases such as carbon dioxide and methane through the soil and air. This not only reduces environmental damage, but also public health issues, as according to the European Parliament, methane contributes to the formation of ozone. This gas can cause serious health problems such as lung disease, asthma attacks and cardiovascular disease.

In order to minimise the environmental impact of our recycling activities, we use mechanical recycling. We recover plastic waste through a process that involves sorting, washing, drying, grinding and re-melting plastic waste. Mechanical recycling does not change the chemical structure of the material and allows the plastic waste to be reused several times.

We give plastic waste a new life

People across the globe buy large quantities of plastic-wrapped products. Often without thinking about it. We also go on to then throw away tonnes of plastic packaging, some of which places a burden on our world and its rivers, beaches and oceans. At Cedo, we are committed to reducing plastic waste in the environment through reuse and recycling.

How exactly does this work?

Our recycling process step by step

Shredding

We reduce the packaging film to a size of no more than thirty centimetres using shredder machines. This allows our sorting machines to sort the waste easily.

Sorting

Our sorting machine sorts the mixed plastic films into one polymer stream. With a Near Infrared waste separation unit (NIR), we differentiate different types of plastic, leaving only the materials we want to reuse.

Grinding

We then cut the plastics into smaller pieces to increase the surface area for washing and drying.

Washing

This is an essential step to remove contaminants sticking to the plastic film, such as organic waste, adhesives and glue on labels.

Drying

We dry the smaller pieces of plastic film using a mechanical and thermal drying process so that we can then process them further.

Extruding

In an extruder we heat the dried pieces of plastic film to a temperature of 200-220° Celsius. A finer filter removes non-melted contaminants, such as wood, paper, old rubber particles and polymers with a higher melting point. We also remove organic substances, fats, oils and ink by degassing. This all results in improved process stability and recycling quality.