Together with Mars and 'Kolesnik' shoe factory, we have released a limited edition clog that has bubble-gum in it. The ready-to-wear item consists of up to 7% recycled gum base.

Tver Polymers Recycling Plant and partners have been researching the ways to recycle gum for 1.5 years. In the end, the research team managed to turn bubble gum into a useful material for producing brand new items.

We have launched a pilot project for collecting and recycling flexible plastic packaging waste that is sold with snacks, chocolate bars, ice cream and many other goods. The project is run in collaboration with RusPRO association with PepsiCo, Nestlé and Unilever, as well as Mars and Mondelēz International.

The collected waste was delivered to Tver Polymers Recycling Plant, where the multi-colored and multi-compositional mass was recycled into granules that can be used for brand new goods – WPC products, trays, shopping baskets etc. The project aims to promote the collection and recycling of a waste type that previously has not been widely recycled neither in Russia nor anywhere in the world.

Together with Mars, we launched a pilot project that involved collecting and recycling pouch packaging of animal food, sauces and baby food. In the present day, the recycling of pouches is very limited due to its multi-layeredness and lack of infrastructure for collecting it separately.

The project concluded with pouch packaging getting effectively recycled at Tver Polymers Recycling Plant. The resulting material was used for producing polymer-sand goods.

We managed to use the packaging assembled during the project not only in the already familiar benches, but also in dog walking area equipment.

2025 is the year by which Unilever plans to substitute all the plastics used in packaging for the types that can be recycled, reused or composted. To achieve this ambitious goal, Unilever is switching composite packaging for the one made, for instance, exclusively from polypropylene.

In order to prove recyclability of the new packaging, we have performed tests hosted by Tver Polymers Recycling Plant. The flexible packaging used by Unilever has been proved suitable for recycling. The granules it forms can be helpful in producing household items and polymer sand goods.

Together with Procter&Gamble, we have launched a collection of unconventional packaging in 'Magnet Cosmetics' stores, with the packaging later getting recycled. The items accepted as part of the project are toothbrushes, doypacks and flexible packaging from face&body cosmetics with a '7 OTHER' marking.

All the items that are collected get recycled at Tver Polymers Recycling Plant. The plastic is used in the production of new items: toothbrushes turn into ball pens, while the flexible packaging is transformed into terrace plank, which is a material for gazebos and garden walkways.

The first-ever McDonald's restaurant to collect waste separately has been launched. On our YouTube channel, you can watch the respective news reports by NTV and Russia24.

The major waste type in McDonald's is paper: laminated, waxed, varnished, or sealed with polyethylene. Such paper is usually not accepted for recycling purposes, since the varnish, laminate or polyethylene have to be detached.
At the project's start, we had options – do we only collect PET bottles that make up a mere 5% of all the waste volume, or do we search novel solutions for paper? Our choice was to do the latter.

Half a year in advance, we have started experiments and managed to find a way to detach the paper fibers from the additives via dispergation. So far, this is an experimental state-of-the-art innovation by Russian scientists, and the financial viability of using dispergators for paper recycling is not clear. However, we still decided to take efforts to break even within the pilot project, and McDonald's was brave enough to support our endeavor.