Banana Plantation Plastic Bag Waste Management (Circular Economy Mexico)

Description

The overall objective of the Short Term Mission was to support the Mexican company ReciSoc in identifying technological alternatives, market opportunities and stakeholders for plastic bag valorisation in Mexico. A polyethylene bag is used to cover the banana fruit during its growth season for protection from the elements as well as animals and pests. 45 kg of polyethylene bags per hectare are generated annually – considering two growing seasons – the bags are used just once. In Chiapas, there are 24 395 hectares that are dedicated to banana farming. RECISOC is recycling 7-10 % of the total plastic waste generated on banana farm lands. From this plastic waste, RECISOC is producing raw material for manufacture of plastic piping and plastic pallets. However, given the limitations of the current available technology, only 20% of the pellet material produced by RECISOC is used as raw material in other industries. This is because in the current process RECISOC is unable to wash the polyethylene bag, but manually selects the bags and processes them without doing a previous wash. This inevitably leads to contamination in the densities and bale products, which does not allow it to be used in more demanding applications than in pipes and pallets. The current process is slow, expensive and does not allow a high quality product to be obtained. Therefore ReciSoc needed to gain a market insight and understanding of the alterative technologies and the stakeholders in the market.