MUSCAT: PR Plastic Recycle, a company from Shinas Vocational College, managed to recycle polyethylene plastic to produce plastic pipes for use in sewage systems.

The project aims to reduce the costs of making plastic and avoid its environmental and tourism risks, which will benefit the Omani economy. It’ll also aid in spreading a culture of recycling and getting rid of the huge amount of waste plastic to create a waste-free environment and produce a sustainable material.

Yousef bin Abdullah Al-Maamari, CEO of the company, said that the pipes are used in sewage systems and are characterised by durability and strength, and the cost of production is lower than the cost of producing a non-recycled pipe.

He added that the most prominent difficulties the company faced was finding a machine that produces pipes, due to the lack of factories that sell recycled raw materials. OQ provided the team with the opportunity to use one of the machines and did a laboratory test of the tubes to measure solubility and other tests.

The CEO of the company stated that the company aspires to have its product available in the local market to compete with major companies that import this type of pipe. He explained that the recycling process takes place by collecting waste plastic of the polyethylene type, crushing it, cleaning it, drying it, then melting it, adding some additives and passing through a specific mold until it comes out to us in its final form, a recycled plastic tube.

He pointed out that the idea began with the establishment of a student company in 2021, and it participated in the Injaz Oman and Al-Araimi Boulevard competition for the year 2022, noting that the company includes 10 student members from various specialisations in the college.

The project won the award for the best innovation in the environmental field (plastic recycling) at Al-Araimi Boulevard Innovation Exhibition 2022.