MYGroup works with J&J on medical plastic recycling

MYGroup (GB) Ltd., a United Kingdom-based waste management and recycling company, is collaborating with Johnson & Johnson Medical Ltd. and Johnson & Johnson MedTech to increase the recycling of packaging for the company’s diagnostic and surgical devices, used in surgical clinics and operating rooms in the U.K.

“The collaboration will see a range of Johnson & Johnson MedTech packaging in the U.K., including foil for sutures, plastic packets and trays, collected from hundreds of settings and recycled end-to-end” by MYGroup at its facility in Hull, England, the recycling firm says.

MYGroup will harvest and recycle the collected material via its separation and recovery processes at its material recovery facility in Hull.

Remaining residual plastic will be converted into MYBoard, a material it says is similar in consistency to plywood used in construction applications and to manufacture of products such as benches and school desks, the company adds.

The aluminum collected will enter the established market for aluminum scrap.

“This collaboration with Johnson & Johnson will deliver a significant and lasting contribution to the National Health Service (NHS) waste targets, particularly in diverting a large proportion of plastic from incineration, and our work will demonstrate the art of the possible: that there is no such thing as ‘unrecyclable waste, even from the most complex operating environments,” says Steve Carrie, a director with MYGroup.

MYGroup says an earlier proof-of-concept stage of the initiative allowed it to produce a large MYBoard bench for Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s Pinewood Campus in England, made from a test sample of the company’s discarded plastic.

This collaborative project represents a move into the clinical and health care space for MYGroup, after the company was approved to process and recycle clinical waste by the (U.K.) Environment Agency in October 2022, the company says.

The initiative also is in line with an NHS Clinical Waste Strategy designed to divert and recycle single-use plastics, MYGroup adds. Currently, nearly 50,000 tons of discarded clinical materials in the NHS network are sent to incineration each year, the health service estimates.

MYGroup is a waste management and recycling business that deploys technology and processes to “recycle the unrecyclable.” The company, established more than 30 years ago, accepts material from the agricultural, construction, health care, cosmetics, food, textiles and plastic sectors, handling up to 800,000 tons of material each year.