Professor Bert Weckhuysen has been awarded funding through the National Growth Fund programme Circular Plastics NL for a groundbreaking research project focused on pigment recycling in plastics. The project, “Towards Circular Use of Pigments in Recycling Plastics,” aims to develop innovative technologies for recovering and reusing colorants from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste streams.

In collaboration with Holland Colours and CuRe Technology, this project will concentrate on extracting and repurposing colorants from widely used PET bottles, addressing a critical challenge in plastics recycling. By developing methods to recover inorganic and organic pigments with guaranteed purity and stability, the project seeks to create a more sustainable approach to plastic material reuse.

Key objectives of this project include:

• Developing new technologies for colorant extraction
• Ensuring high-quality pigment recovery from PET recycling streams
• Creating pathways for commercial reuse of recovered colorants
• Advancing circular economy principles in plastics manufacturing

This award is announced here, and you can read more about the aims of this project here.