Mura Technology is the First Advanced Recycler to Join Ecoinvent Life Cycle Database

Mura Technology, a pioneer of advanced plastic recycling solutions, has become the first advanced recycling company featured in the ecoinvent life cycle inventory database – a leading repository of reliable, verifiable data for analysing the environmental impact of products and services. 

Following a rigorous peer review process, ecoinvent’s version 3.11 database will include Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data from Mura’s Hydro-PRT advanced plastic recycling facility at Wilton, Teesside, UK. Inclusion of Mura’s data will allow stakeholders from the wider plastics value chain to explore confidently what advanced recycling can do to support circularity and reduction of carbon intensity. 

The LCA, independently published by WMG at the University of Warwick, shows an 80% reduction in climate impacts from Hydro-PRT compared to incineration. The study also found that producing naphtha, a fossil oil-based feedstock used in the production of plastics, via Hydro-PRT had a lower Global Warming Potential (GWP) than the fossil fuel equivalent. 

Dr Steve Mahon, Mura Technology’s CEO, said “Mura’s inclusion in ecoinvent’s database is essential to enabling companies within the plastics value chain and their customers to use our data confidently. We’re proud to be the first advanced recycling company receiving this verification and are committed to continually updating our data within ecoinvent as we develop the technology further.”

Avraam Symeonidis, Database Content Lead at ecoinvent, said “At ecoinvent, we are committed to supporting the availability of high-quality data for environmental assessments. Including hydrothermal treatment data in the ecoinvent database represents our continuous quest to meet our users' needs in understanding their environmental impact. We are grateful to Mura for the collaboration and look forward to continuing to publish representative data for their pioneering technology in the future.”

Pioneered by Mura Technology, the Hydro-PRT process is demonstrates advanced plastic recycling because of its use of supercritical water (water under elevated pressure and temperature, above its critical point), which distinguishes it from alternative advanced recycling processes such as pyrolysis, ensuring the efficient and scalable conversion of plastic waste to hydrocarbons. Hydro-PRT can process contaminated and mixed plastics, such as flexible and rigid food packaging, producing high yields of circular hydrocarbon products for use in the manufacture of virgin-quality, recycled plastics. There is no limit to the number of times the same material can be recycled – meaning Hydro-PRT has the potential to reduce the need for fossil resources in plastic production and increase material circularity in the plastics industry.