Malaysian recycler wants to turn Asia's ocean plastics into products

Düsseldorf, Germany — Stopping plastic litter in Asia from getting into the ocean — and then turning those dirty materials into something that can be used again — is a huge technical and commercial challenge.

But Malaysian plastic recycling company Heng Hiap Industries Sdn. Bhd. is making a serious try and believes it's found a way to make it work.

The Johor, Malaysia-based recycling firm this year started collecting waste specifically from waterways and coastal communities in its home country, cleaning it and then turning it into finished pellets that it sells to other manufacturers.

"We have successfully converted ocean plastics into different products," CEO Kian Hoe Seah said in a mid-October interview at the company's booth at K 2019 in Düsseldorf.

Heng Hiap's product launch is in its early stages, and the volumes are very small compared to its traditional plastics recycling business, which takes polypropylene from Malaysia's regular waste stream.

But Seah said his company has secured eight customers for the ocean-bound material, which it brands as Plashaus Ocean Plastics.

"We have one company doing apparel and footwear," he said. "We have one company doing furniture. We have one company that's doing all kinds of things."

Rollouts are beginning. One customer, Malaysian furniture maker Kian Group, has unveiled a prototype of an injection molded chair by Dutch designer Danny Fang, using Heng Hiap's ocean waste PP material.

It introduced the prototype, part of what it calls its line of Louvre Chairs, at the Furniture China 2019 show in September in Shanghai. Kian Group said it found "overwhelming" interest among corporate, hotel and restaurant furniture buyers.

"At this moment it is our pilot project," Kian Group said in a written statement. "We are currently very close to making it commercially viable for mass market."

The interest reflects growing concern among companies to try to address environmental issues like ocean waste and global warming, it said.

"We had an overwhelming response from visitors, both our existing customers and new visitors," the company said. "Most wanted to know the process of how ocean-bound plastics are made into a chair and how they can obtain the product."

The furniture maker first introduced its Louvre chair in 2013 and markets it to quick-service-style restaurants. It is optimistic about the new ocean-bound plastic version, but it is doing more testing to make sure it can stand up to heavy commercial use.

Using recycled plastics collected around waterways has challenges and adds cost, Kian Group said.

"Recycling and sustainability is not a cheap process in our industry, but in Kian we believe in a better world," it said. "Despite the cost, we continue to forge ahead with this endeavor and absorb as much of the extra cost as possible so that we can put more recycled and sustainable materials out to market."

Kian Group and Heng Hiap are working against the backdrop of intense pressure around plastics recycling in their home country.

When China closed its doors to imports of many kind of plastic scrap in 2018, some of that material shifted to Malaysia and to newly opened, unlicensed recycling factories that sprang up around the country.

Malaysia then started a crackdown, closing more than 150 of those unlicensed operations, Seah said.

Malaysia's plastics industry association responded in early October with a report calling for the government to enact extended producer responsibility systems. Calling for regulation was an unusual move for an industry group, but it reflects the pressure that plastics companies are feeling.

"There is sentiment to stay away from plastics and businesses could feel that already," Seah said.

With that pressure, Seah said Heng Hiap saw a lot of interest in its ocean plastics material at K 2019. He cited both general interest from manufacturers looking for lower carbon footprints, and specific plans like Unilever plc's Oct. 7 announcement that it wanted to cut its use of virgin plastic in half by 2025.

"Unilever made a global pledge that they will reduce their virgin plastics use by 50 percent, but they're not going to buy any random recycled plastic," Seah said. "They will buy from someone where they can see the entire traceability. Everything is being done right."

It will be crucial for recyclers to validate their supply chains, showing where they get their material and that it's collected ethically without, for example, child labor, Seah said.

He said Heng Hiap is working with the international auditing firm SGS to verify its manufacturing chain and California-based sourcing platform OceanWorks. Kian Group is also working with OceanWorks.

Heng Hiap has given thought to the marketing of ocean material. In a news release, the company said it wants to develop, with brand owners, a QR code that directs visitors to a website on how the ocean material is collected, reprocessed and used again in manufacturing so that customers can "claim [it] as a legitimate marketing message."

As well, the company coined a tagline: "Every piece of plastic you recycle, is a piece of ocean you save."

Heng Hiap's regular recycled resin is also getting the same traceable certifications to show that it's sourced and manufactured responsibly, Seah said. All of its material traditionally has come from domestic sources in Malaysia.

Seah said Heng Hiap produces about 30,000 metric tons of high-performance PP recycled compounds a year from its eight extrusion lines and exports more than half of that.

Over time, ocean plastic material will grow as a percentage of its total business, he said.

As it began to work on collecting ocean plastic, the company tapped into local networks of people in Malaysia who collect recycled material, Seah said. Heng Hiap has developed standards that the company communicates to those collectors.

"We tell everybody how we like things to be prepared before it comes to us, and that helps," Seah said. "Each and every time when they do better, we pay them more."

The ocean plastic does not have to literally be collected in the ocean. Seah said ocean plastic — or "ocean-bound" plastic, as it's sometimes called — can include materials from river deltas, shorelines and neighborhoods near oceans.

"In order to fight ocean plastics, we need to take care of ocean-avoided plastics," Seah said.