Hundreds Attend Hugely Successful GRIPS 2024

Over 600 people attended the Global Research and Innovation in Plastics Sustainability Conference 2024 (GRIPS 2024), which took place at the the University of Sheffield on 19 September. Roughly 200 attended online, giving the event a truly global reach. Now in its fourth edition, GRIPS deep dives into a wide range of issues relating to the sustainability of plastics. The 2024 edition was organised by Innovate UK in partnership with the British Plastics Federation (BPF), supported by the Worshipful Company of Horners (which provided a donation in memory of David Williams), and was sponsored by Plastics Europe and Sheffield University’s Grantham Institute for Sustainable Futures.

The one-day event had three separate conference streams, focusing on sustainability, recycling and materials innovation. Sally Beken, founder of the Circular Plastics Network within Innovate UK Business Connect, welcomed the crowd and thanked the sponsors. Speaking about the challenges in reaching sustainable solutions for the use of plastics, Beken stated…

We want to chart a stable future for plastics and chart the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Later, she added:

Together we can build a sustainable plastics future that works for the planet, the people and prosperity.

BPF Director General Philip Law then took to the stage and spoke of his delight at partnering with Innovate UK to deliver what promised to be such a successful event, attended by key professionals across the entire plastics and recycling spectrum, as well as many academics and NGOs. Law paid his respects to the late David Williams. Returning to the challenges of enabling a sustainable future for plastics, and highlighting the importance of the GRIPS event, Law stated:

The optimal way to precipitate this necessary transition is to facilitate the interaction between industry and the universities.

Barry Maunders, master of the Worshipful Company of Horners, then addressed the crowd, again paying tribute to David Williams and describing the Horners’ rich history.

The keynote speech was given by Professor Rachel Rothman of Sheffield University, who is also co-director of Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, and Fanran Meng, who is a lecturer in sustainable engineering. Their talk explained how simply replacing plastics with alternative materials is worse when it comes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in most current applications, and detailed LCA analysis has found that plastics have lower GHG impact in 14 out of 16 applications they analysed, when including both direct and indirect emissions.

Their talk also discussed trials the university has done in returnable ‘Vytal’ packaging (the Many Happy Returns project). This was supplemented by additional, fascinating research into the amount a reusable product needs to be used to be superior to single use alternatives, as well as research into consumer attitudes towards acceptable levels of discoloration and wear on reusable items. The findings suggested it was technically possible to get a ‘break even’ point with single use alternatives with as little as five uses.

They also discussed other research into the language used around plastic (the most common word used in conjunction with ‘plastic’ is ‘but’, for your information), other reuse projects, and research into the best end of life option for plastic, which suggested incineration is the least desirable option. They closed by alluding to the possibility that plastic can theoretically end up ‘carbon negative’ by using plastics as a means to capture carbon and lock it away -  but achieving this needs such products to be definitely collected at the end of their life and managed in an optimal way, with no leakage to environment.

BPF Sustainability Manager Helen Jordan also spoke in the ‘recycling’ conference stream, explaining the latest findings from the new iteration of the BPF recycling roadmap. The BPF will be releasing more information about this soon.

After a free lunch, courtesy of the sponsors, Philip Law chaired a session called ‘New Business Models and Behaviour Change’ within the ‘materials’ conference stream, which featured presentations from Dr Pete Clark from Innovate UK Business Connect, John Ferguson from Binn Eco Park, Ann Stevenson from Resource Futures and David Landsberg from Peasy. This was followed by an excellent panel discussion about the changes needed within businesses and how to incentivise individuals to play a greater role in keeping more material within a circular system.

GRIPS 2024 also had speakers from Tesco, Defra, RECOUP, CEFLEX, numerous universities, and many others (there were almost 60 speakers). In addition to excellent networking for the hundreds of in-person attendees, the event featured many exhibitors, who all appeared to have a very busy day. The BPF also had a stand and spoke to dozens of people on a variety of topics, promoting its many sustainability initiatives and distributing copies of its ever-popular BPF Members Directory. Exhibitors at GRIPS 2024 included:

• GPE Scientific 
• Henry Royce Institute
• Plastribution
• University of Birmingham
• The Bridge @ University of Lincoln
• University of Manchester
• University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre
• University of Warwick
• The Worshipful Company of Horners

The main supporters of the event, the Worshipful Company of Horners, also announced the winners of the BPF Horners Award for Plastics Innovation and Design, the Horners Bottlemakers Award and the David Williams Award. An interesting introduction was given by Stefaan Simons, who explained that the former was the oldest award for plastics innovation in the world, which today is diligently judged by many experts from industry. He explained the history of the Horners, and how their existence evolved from the historic use of horn in many applications, such as in early windows and lanterns.

The awards were presented by the Master of the Horners Barry Maunders. The winners included:

1. Loughborough University for its next-generation police body armour, which is made using additive manufacturing and laser sintered, and is comfortable and protective, particularly for women police officers. It is also stab proof and bullet proof and spike proof.
2. Hawkins Mutes for its Blowmoulded Brass Instrument Mutes.
3. Isabel Payne from the Glasgow School of Art, who created a reusable, self-sterilising menstrual product.

The two highly commended winners for the BPF Horners Award for Plastics Innovation and Design were a ‘glow vision’ optical PET flake sorter by Buhler UK, and Aquapak for its ‘hydropol’ material, which has enabled the world’s first fully kerbside recyclable crisp packet (with a fully biodegradable polymer coating). Highly commend within the Bottlemakers Awards was a refillable milk bottle by Berry Global — a reusable one-litre PP bottle with half the carbon footprint of a glass alternative.

Full details about the winners of the Horners Awards can be found here.

The Horners then announced the winners of the student poster competition, which was sponsored by both IoM3 and Tangram Technology. There were three winners:

• For ‘research quality’: Sophia van Mourik, University of Sheffield
• For ‘impact’: Erica Barnes, University of Bristol
• Overall winner: Jerome Anokwu, University of Salford Manchester

Commenting on the day, BPF Director General Philip Law stated:

Working with Innovate UK and the UK Circular Plastics Network on GRIPS was a groundbreaking move. This is the largest enterprise we have mounted in order to bring industry together with the UK academic community. I hope that this is a firm step towards the UK being recognised as the thought leader globally in sustainable plastic manufacture, innovation, use, reuse and recycling.

If you are interested in sponsoring GRIPS next year, please contact [email protected]