Sustainable products for the people.

Our production process

At Upcycled Plastics, our vision is to reduce the short life cycle of single use plastics. To do this we spent 1 year designing and engineering our very own production line from scratch!

Sourcing used plastic

Upcycled Plastics is working with Anchor Milk Canterbury to recycle plastic from cafes and restaurants across the Selwyn District. Currently, 500 used milk bottles get delivered to our place of production every week which we recycle into a wide range of high quality products. We aim to increase our recycling rate to 1000 milk bottles a week by the end of 2022!

Upcycled Plastics is working with Resikle, which is a Rolleston based company responsible for managing the supply and disposal of used coat hangers. We currently recycle their broken coat hangers into a wide range of high-quality products. We aim to increase our recycling rate to 500 broken coat hangers a week by the end of 2022!

How we turn waste into high quality products.

Removing labels

The fist stage of our process is removing labels and any debree from used plastic

Cleaning our plastic

We use minimal amounts of water to rinse the used plastic, before switching to citric based cleaner to get rid of any lingering dirt or grime.

Shredding the plastic

Our cleaned plastic gets processed through a shredder, producing small plastic pieces.

Melting Plastic

We melt our plastic down using a heated-press machine, which allows us to achieve perfect plastic consistency without any air bubbles.

Transfering plastic

Once the plastic is fully melted and the colours are combined, we transfer it into a mould with a closed loop water circulation system. Which preheats the mould to 75c. The energy from the plastic gets recycled to heat the hot water reservoir, reducing power wastage.

Forming the sheet

Using a hydralic jack we press the plastic into a sheet. We then pump cold water through the closed loop water circulation system to rapidly cool the sheet.