The ITA validates the industrial use of waste masks to manufacture combs and brushes

The Irish company Denroy already does it and Aragón is looking for managers to promote it.

Look for a double useful life for the masks and that they do not end up in the landfill. That is the goal of 'Wasamask' project industrially validated by Technological Institute of Aragon (ITA, Itainnova) in collaboration with the plastics company Denroy, from Northern Ireland, which was presented this Tuesday by the Science Minister of the regional government, Maru Diaz. With the combs and brushes in hand made from the plastic material obtained from the crushed remains of masks - after removing the rubber bands and the metal support - Díaz underlined the "pioneer of circular economy" character that he represents.

To show how 'Wasamask' has gone from being a project to having an industrial application, the counselor was accompanied in her explanations by the director of the ITA, Esther Borao; Denroy Technology Coordinator, Alberto Lario, and the researchers Cristina Crespo and Pablo González.

Lario - who worked for four years for the ITA, who left in 2014 and is now a manager at Denroy - has been the bridge to industrially validate this mask reuse project. "In 2020, this company that turns 50, a leader in plastic solutions for the aerospace and automotive industries, created a new plant, Denpro, to manufacture FFP3 masks, but the amount of waste generated was very high and we thought about how to close the circuit and put materials back into the value chain," Lario explained. Thus, he pointed out, Hair brushes emerged as a clear commitment to the circular economy, which has allowed growth in employment. The production of masks and subsequently its reuse has meant that if "before the pandemic the workforce in Denroy was 220 people, by mid-2021 there were already around 400," he estimated.

Crespo, from the ITA and medal for Civil Merit awarded by the Spanish Royal House, recalled that it has been thanks to the collaboration with Denroy and the University of Ulster, when it comes to researching polymers, that the validation on an industrial scale of 'Wasamask' has been achieved, which has allowed the manufacture of combs and hair brushes "tested by professional hairdressers," said this researcher, and without differences from others already on the market.

The counselor recalled that "the covid pandemic also brought a plastic pandemic" and in the search for solutions they came up with 'Wasamask', which goes beyond recycling because the material of the masks is reused to be useful again.

In parallel, researcher Pablo González spoke about the study that they have carried out from the ITA, together with the Multicriteria Decision group of the University of Zaragoza, to install containers in the city's pharmacies for the collection of masks, which would mean in a city like Zaragoza the weekly collection of almost 1,5 million masksThat is, about 274 tons of material would be recovered per year, which could be valued at savings in manufacturing costs for new products of 436.000 euros. In addition, the emission of 318 tons of CO2 equivalent would be avoided, resulting from the non-reuse of the mask material.

Source: Heraldo de Aragón