“At Consent FZCO, we believe that we should leave the planet in better shape than we found it,” said Maheshwar Akkala, General Manager – Plastics, Consent FZCO.

Product Responsibility

Dubai-based Consent collects over 6.000 tonnes of PET bottles from waste sites annually and processes these to high quality PET bottle flakes, using a state-of-the-art recycling unit developed and integrated by themselves. Along with PET bottles, PET strapping tape from post-industrial units are also processed by having best practices in the environmental business and sustainability in the region,  which leads to a significant reduction of CO2 emission.

“Recycling is the process of taking a product at the end of its useful life and using all or part of it to make another product. Consent transforms PET bottle waste and discarded PET strap from interlock or block bundle into consistent, high-quality PET flakes for manufacturing of PET strapping,” said Maheshwar, adding that the company’s flakes replace virgin resin that is mainly produced from fossil fuels. Overall, less energy is required to produce a part made of recycled material as compared to a part made of virgin material due to the amount of fossil fuels used per part, he commented. 

Process Responsibility

A key challenge for PET recycling is efficiently removing contaminants, noted Akkala. “Consent proprietary washing technology is able to accomplish this with low or no use of chemicals or degrading solutions. It does not emit any toxins into the air, nor does it degrade the physical properties or composition of PET material.” 

The company has opted for closed loop recycling which involves the collection of post-consumer PET bottles and discarded PET strap from various sources to begin with. The material is then crushed, washed and all contaminants removed. It is then processed into high quality flakes that are used primarily to produce PET strapping for various applications. 

The company’s advanced facility for recycling PET bottles has a capacity to recycle 1000 tons of plastic per month. For 1kg of pet bottle recycling 4.5 litres of fresh water is required. In order to minimise the freshwater consumption, the company has set up a wastewater treatment plant with a capacity of 200 litre cube per day, and the remaining wastewater from the process is treated and the water reused in the process, so they can minimise the use of fresh water.

Consent has state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, and they check every parameter of the flakes, said Akkala, adding that they consume 90 percent of the material for in house production of PET strapping, while the remaining 10 percent goes outside for manufacturing of thermoforming or geo textile items, etc.  

“We also collect from our end users the strap that we make once it has reached end of life. We then crush it and use it as raw material, to produce new PET strap. When we had introduced this initiative in 2015 the collection rate was 25 percent, and now it is approximately 70 percent,” he noted.

Consent has decided to expand the production capacity of strapping from existing 800 tons per month to 1200 tons per month by the end of 2022. This would enable the company to consume more and more recycled bottle flakes resulting in saving energy and promoting a sustainable environment for future generations, said Akkala. The company won the “Plastics Recycling Company of the Year” Award at MEWAR Awards 2021.