Cambridge: ACES winner Enval scoops up Best New Technology prize at National Recycling Awards

The patented plastic-aluminium laminate material recovery technology developed by Cambridge Enterprise portfolio company Enval was named Best New Technology at the National Recycling Awards, held Sunday night (17 July), in London.

The National Recycling Awards are organised by Materials Recycling Weekly (MRW). These annual awards reward and support the efforts of local authorities and councils, as well as the construction and retail sectors, recognising the best recycling and waste management achievements in the UK.

“We are delighted to receive one of the UK’s prestigious National Recycling Awards for our work,” commented Dr Carlos Ludlow-Palafox, Enval’s Managing Director and CTO (pictured). “The Enval team are extremely proud to have their efforts recognised by the industry heavyweights on the judging panel, especially as we were up against such strong competition in our category.”

Andrea Lockerbie, acting editor, MRW commented on the evening: “Winning a National Recycling Award is an amazing achievement. Each year the standard and number of entries and gets higher and higher, making it a tough job for the judges to pick out a winner. My congratulations go to all of our very deserving winners, and our finalists should feel equally proud of their success too.”

Enval was spun out from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology in 2005. The company is commercialising waste recycling and environmental technologies that can recover clean aluminium from packaging waste such as toothpaste tubes. The recovered aluminium can, in turn, be resmelted. Enval’s technology provides the first alternative to dumping such waste in landfill.

In Europe alone, Enval could treat an estimated 2 million tonnes of waste per annum which would otherwise be sent to landfill. The judges were impressed by Enval’s technology and large commercial potential.