Compax Eurostars PES

Commercial and public buildings (e.g. offices, schools, hospitals) generate upwards of 35% of all municipal solid waste from their daily operations, including paper, cardboard, plastics, food waste and electronic waste. Of this, paper towel waste alone accounts for up to 40%, estimated at 200M tons per year, globally. Mechanical waste compactors have emerged as a potential solution, yet they have not been adopted on a large scale as they: are heavy and bulky, cannot be wall-mounted in smaller indoor spaces and are too expensive relative to the cost of cleaning staff. The facility management industry is well aware of this issue and is desperately looking for new solutions to improve the sustainability of their operations, as well as comply with increasingly strict national and EU waste regulations. Norwegian SME, Compax Solutions AS (COMP), is already tackling this problem with their Compax System – a lightweight, affordable vacuum compactor tailored for washroom paper towels. Powered by sensors and intelligent software, the Compax System incorporates a patented vacuum compaction technology that is significantly cheaper and smaller than mechanical compaction systems. To-date, 250 units have been installed across Norway, which have avoided disposal of 85,880 plastic bags and prevented 7 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions. Born from close dialogue with end-customers, we now aim to scale-up our business and impact by bringing to the market a fully circular offering that is not dependent on fossil-based plastic bags. For this, we have teamed up with bioplastics company Toraphene (TORA) (UK) to develop, test and certify a novel high-strength, compostable bag for commercial use in the Compax System. As such, this project will develop new knowledge in graphene-based bioplastics for industrial applications, manufacturing scalability of these bioplastics, as well as Compax’s collaboration on the design of a custom-tailored bag for Compax System together with Toraphene.