Boards made from recycled plastic

Storm Board take hard to recycled mixed waste plastic and make it into a long lasting, low maintenance, reusable board. The waste plastic in question just has to be granulated in to 5mm chunks or pulverized into a powder so that it can be put into the process. There is no need for it to be sorted and pelletized, as is required in most other recycling processes. This greatly reduces energy use, complexity and cost. The plastic is then put into patented moulds that heat and cool the granulated plastic in such a way that flat, consistent panels are produced.

What makes Storm Board different from anything else on the market is that the boards come out with an “aerated core” which make them lighter and easier to cut then other plastic sheets. It is also this that enables the use of mixed plastics without it weakening the boards. There are also no harmful outputs. The only output apart from the boards is swarf produced in the cook process and this is collected, granulated and used as an input material for future production. 

In terms of measuring the impact of Storm Board, a clear benefit is that every board made means 30kg of plastic is recycled. This is equivalent to diverting 1,600 yoghurt pots or 1,100 cosmetics bottles from landfill. A LCA has been done on the process, which proved that because the boards are long lasting and reusable they have a lower carbon footprint than single use ply. Making just 100m of hoarding out of Storm Boards and reusing them just 3 times will result in a CO2 saving of 1,500kg. The LCA also said that since Storm Board do not use any new natural resources as input materials, they have less than 5% of the impact of ply in terms of land use and water use. 

The boards cost approximately twice the price of painted ply. This means that there is a slight upfront cost involved with the initial purchase of the boards vs. ply but the boards will outlast ply in any outdoor or in-ground use which means they are in fact noted by Storm Board as being better value. The other benefit is that there is no disposal cost, unlike with ply, at the end of life. The boards can either be reused or at the end of their long useful life or they can be sent back to Storm Board to be remade into new boards.