322
4 HP R2P2 program
This program highlights Circular Economy innovation of Inkjet Printer cartridges
and demonstrates that by leveraging HP’s scale, partnerships, customer relationships, materials knowledge and process innovation, we have closed material loops
in technical grade polypropylene (PP).
1. Closed loop recycling with cascaded PP streams: HP inkjet cartridges returned
by customers are collected, plastic separated, recovered and cleaned. They are
combined with different cascaded PP streams (from other post-consumer applications) and plastic additives to create a ready-to-mold, 85 % recycled content
plastic (RCP) replacement for virgin plastic resin.
2. Fully closed loop recycling with HP-only streams: HP inkjet cartridges returned
by customers are collected, plastic separated, recovered, cleaned, re-pelletized
and mixed at 20–30 % with virgin resin. This process allowed HP to accelerate
the development cycle, providing a very solid example of developing “pure”
material streams and then incorporating these streams into fully scaled manufacturing processes. With this most recent project, HP applied the knowledge and
experience of the past 9 years of closed-loop recycling, reverse logistics, materials development, product design and separation technology to reduce the learning cycle from nearly 7 years, to approximately 9 months from project start to
manufacturing ramp. This project began its worldwide production ramp on 27
October, 2014.
With the two PP projects fully implemented in manufacturing, HP expects to use
nearly 5 million kilos of recycled PP in 2015. Combined with the multiyear effort
on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), HP now uses approximately 10 million kilos
of recycled plastic in inkjet cartridges. By 2014 year end, over 90 % of HP’s inkjet
cartridges shipped contain recycled plastic from closed loop and cascaded streams
(Fig. 17.2 ).
HP has achieved this through collaborative effort with several key supply chain
partners:
• Reverse logistics: HP is using multiple reverse logistics routes (channel partners,
bulk enterprise customer shipments and logistics providers) to collect, process
and recycle 10 million kgs of plastic material every year.
• Partner development: A collaborative recycling eco-system has been created to
utilize the strengths of multiple partner suppliers including recycling, material
refi ning, material development and plastics compounding.
• Recycling process and equipment development: This is a very critical piece of
innovation which enables pure material streams to be used without requiring
performance trade-offs.
• HP is driving recycling process innovation and recycling equipment development including patented recycling equipment and $Ms invested in product disassembly tooling.
K. McIntyre and J.A. Ortiz
4 HP R2P2 program
This program highlights Circular Economy innovation of Inkjet Printer cartridges
and demonstrates that by leveraging HP’s scale, partnerships, customer relationships, materials knowledge and process innovation, we have closed material loops
in technical grade polypropylene (PP).
1. Closed loop recycling with cascaded PP streams: HP inkjet cartridges returned
by customers are collected, plastic separated, recovered and cleaned. They are
combined with different cascaded PP streams (from other post-consumer applications) and plastic additives to create a ready-to-mold, 85 % recycled content
plastic (RCP) replacement for virgin plastic resin.
2. Fully closed loop recycling with HP-only streams: HP inkjet cartridges returned
by customers are collected, plastic separated, recovered, cleaned, re-pelletized
and mixed at 20–30 % with virgin resin. This process allowed HP to accelerate
the development cycle, providing a very solid example of developing “pure”
material streams and then incorporating these streams into fully scaled manufacturing processes. With this most recent project, HP applied the knowledge and
experience of the past 9 years of closed-loop recycling, reverse logistics, materials development, product design and separation technology to reduce the learning cycle from nearly 7 years, to approximately 9 months from project start to
manufacturing ramp. This project began its worldwide production ramp on 27
October, 2014.
With the two PP projects fully implemented in manufacturing, HP expects to use
nearly 5 million kilos of recycled PP in 2015. Combined with the multiyear effort
on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), HP now uses approximately 10 million kilos
of recycled plastic in inkjet cartridges. By 2014 year end, over 90 % of HP’s inkjet
cartridges shipped contain recycled plastic from closed loop and cascaded streams
(Fig. 17.2 ).
HP has achieved this through collaborative effort with several key supply chain
partners:
• Reverse logistics: HP is using multiple reverse logistics routes (channel partners,
bulk enterprise customer shipments and logistics providers) to collect, process
and recycle 10 million kgs of plastic material every year.
• Partner development: A collaborative recycling eco-system has been created to
utilize the strengths of multiple partner suppliers including recycling, material
refi ning, material development and plastics compounding.
• Recycling process and equipment development: This is a very critical piece of
innovation which enables pure material streams to be used without requiring
performance trade-offs.
• HP is driving recycling process innovation and recycling equipment development including patented recycling equipment and $Ms invested in product disassembly tooling.
K. McIntyre and J.A. Ortiz