Novel recycling for sustainable GRP Composites in industry (greenGRP)

Europe’s rail industry generates thousands of tonnes of glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) waste each year, and this project will turn that waste back into usable raw materials instead of sending it to landfill. GRP is strong, lightweight, and widely used in train carriages, wind turbine blades, and boat hulls. But it is notoriously difficult to recycle—the glass fibres and polymer resin are fused together, and conventional methods either degrade the materials or consume too much energy. This project, called greenGRP, develops a novel recycling process that separates the glass fibres from the resin without destroying them, producing materials that can be remanufactured into new products. The goal is to close the loop: waste GRP becomes feedstock for the same industries that produced it. If the technology works at scale, it could cut the whole-life carbon footprint of GRP products significantly, while reducing demand for virgin raw materials. The immediate target is the rail industry, which DC already supplies, but the same process could extend to automotive, aerospace, maritime, and national grid infrastructure. The research is applied and commercially driven—there is no fundamental science here, just engineering a practical solution to a mounting waste problem.