Major collaboration announced to recycle Correx signage

Corplex, the exclusive manufacturer of Correx, has partnered with media and marketing partners, Global and The Delta Group, to create a new closed-loop recycling system for out-of-home (OOH) media.

The project centres around a new multi-million-pound 22,000sq ft deinking facility at Corplex’s Gloucester site.

The system is designed for outdoor signage mounted on the sides of London buses, made from polypropylene (PP) Correx board.

Traditionally, printed vinyl is glued onto the boards, which are then reused two to three times before being discarded. Once they reached end-of-life, the boards are incinerated or sent to landfill – creating non-recyclable waste and a higher carbon footprint.

The new closed-loop system allows direct returns of the printed Correx boards after an advertising campaign, returning to Corplex’s Gloucester site after each campaign.

The boards are then shredded, washed, and recycled into clean, high-whiteness PP flakes. These are then re-extruded into new boards with up to 70% recycled content, which Corplex claims is an industry first.

Corplex’s chief executive officer, Lucas van der Schalk, says: “This is a world first for printed PP boards and moves the needle on closed-loop recycling.

“The level of investment we’ve made in our unique deinking facility is fully justified when you look at the results. Partnering with Global and The Delta Group demonstrates how collaboration can make a sustainable difference.”

Global’s extensive OOH portfolio includes Transport for London’s (TFL’s) Underground network, as well as the UK’s largest network of buses in major towns and cities across the UK.

The Delta Group supplies OOH content in print and digital formats for applications onto billboards, bus sides, train stations, and a wide range of other media locations.

The process will reportedly reduce carbon emissions by over 500 tonnes annually, cutting carbon footprint by 80%, which Corplex calculates as the equivalent to 1,200 one-way flights from London to New York, or removing 110 cars from the road each year.

Speaking about the feasibility of PP recycling in signage, van der Schalk continues: “The shift toward reusable, recyclable substrates is no longer about feasibility – it’s about adoption. When combined with high-efficiency deinking, polypropylene offers the clearest path to circularity in printed signage.”

Having started its recycling scheme with Global and The Delta Group, Corplex is now also working with partners across several packaging and other applications to enable its Correx boards and AkyPak packaging and containers to be captured within a closed-loop system.

The process will be the same as with the OOH media project, with returns being shredded, washed, and recycled into new Correx sheets, delivering sustainability benefits to other sectors.

More information about Corplex’s circular plastics solutions, including its plastics recovery scheme to sell discarded PP products, can be found on the company’s website.

Van der Schalk adds: “Stakeholders – from advertisers and agencies to municipalities – must now evaluate signage not just on print quality and durability, but also on total lifestyle impact and recyclability infrastructure.”