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Sustainable partners

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Ardagh Glass Dongen

Ardagh Glass Dongen is part of the Ardagh Group, one of the world’s largest (metal and glass) packaging manufacturers. The company’s enormous growth over the last few years has been driven by expertise, an obsession with quality and a commitment to continuous improvement. Ardagh Glass Dongen produces glass packaging in Dongen for a variety of clients.

AquaMinerals provides Ardagh with low-iron lime (pellets), an essential ingredient in the manufacture of glass. Ardagh Glass is thus pursuing its sustainability ambitions, and is now employing this material on a large scale in the manufacture of white glass. This application earned us and our partners the KWR/IWA Resource Recovery Award in 2015.

Desso

Desso is a producer of high-quality carpet tiles and wall-to-wall carpeting. Desso’s innovation strategy is based on three pillars: Creativity, Functionality and Cradle to Cradle®.

In a partnership with EPEA (Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency) of Hamburg, Desso has become the first carpet manufacturer within the EMEA region to operate according to the Cradle to Cradle® principle. This underlines Desso’s radical decision to go beyond ‘simple’ sustainability in its production of carpets and artificial turf. According to the Cradle to Cradle® principle, products should be made from positively-defined components that are biologically or technically degradable, so that they can be reused in the biological and technical loops as raw materials for new products.

AquaMinerals supplies dried and custom-ground, sand-free lime pellets to Desso, which uses them as filler in carpet-tile backing. This application earned us and our partners the KWR/IWA Resource Recovery Award in 2015.

Energy & Raw Material Factory

The Energy & Raw Materials Factory (EFGF) is a network organisation set up by the Dutch waterboards. The waterboards no longer look at wastewater only as a medium that needs treating, but also as a source of sustainable energy, resources and clean water. WWTPs have been converted into energy factories, and marketable struvite is being recovered from wastewater at several locations. The EFGF has even greater ambitions: targeted research is studying the possibilities of recovering other valuable resources from wastewater, such as cellulose, alginate, and humic and fulvic acids.

The similarities between the EFGF and AquaMinerals are evident, and our two organisations work together whenever possible – for example, on research, legal and policy challenges, and communications. AquaMinerals is already marketing (WWTP) struvite, and collaborates intensively with the EFGF in this activity.

KWR Watercycle Research Institute

KWR Watercycle Research Institute helps society in optimally organising and managing the watercycle by:

  • Creating knowledge via high-quality research
  • Building bridges between science, business and society
  • Promoting innovation with the best knowledge available

KWR plays an important role for AquaMinerals in a wide variety of innovation and research projects. Recent successful examples include the transition to sand-free lime pellets and the production of high-value iron pellets from iron sludge.

KWR and AquaMinerals are headquartered in the same building and have the same shareholders.

Van Lijssel Transport

Van Lijssel Transport is a transport company based in ’s-Hertogenbosch, and a full-service partner in the civil engineering, and non-residential and utility construction sectors.

In 2012, Van Lijssel Transport approached AquaMinerals with the idea of a truck that dries its lime pellet load using the hot exhaust gases from the truck’s own engine. Following an extensive period of lab research, pilot research and optimising the truck, in 2013 the first lime pellets were dried onboard the vehicle. An extremely environmentally-friendly, flexible and cost-effective manner of ensuring the lime pellets meet client specifications!

BureauLeiding

BureauLeiding is, first and foremost, a knowledge centre, which aims to make working with plastic pipes as convenient and straightforward as possible for everyone. BureauLeiding is also an umbrella branch association for five leading Dutch manufacturers of plastic pipe systems, who assure 100% recyclability, including a reuse guarantee.

Since 1974 BureauLeiding’s main goal has been to disseminate knowledge and experience to ensure the optimal production, processing, installation, use, replacement and recycling of plastic pipes.

In 2014, BureauLeiding and AquaMinerals (at the time: Reststoffenunie) signed an agreement to collaborate on the collection and processing of plastic pipe waste. The objective was to increase the volume of plastic pipe waste which, through expert collection and reprocessing, is principally reused in new pipe material or, otherwise, used in new plastic products.  This approach contributes to reducing the environmental impact of the operations of the water distribution companies and of the plastic pipe manufacturers, which are represented by the two partners in the agreement.