Dudelange-based greentech WeThink is in talks to bring a recycled plastic granulation plant to Luxembourg.
If successful, the plant would transform plastic films collected from Luxembourg recycling centres into LDPE granules for use in recycled plastic products like bin bags.
“We looked everything through and now it’s time to set up the project and look for partners in terms of funding,” WeThink founder and CEO Luc Schmit told Silicon Luxembourg.
Some of the plastics that are collected by Valorlux in Luxembourg’s recycling centres and then recycled are given a new life in the form of WeThink’s popular recycled plastic bin bags, “De Grénge Sak”. And the firm is currently organising in-house sorting procedures and hopes to access more Luxembourg post-consumer sources of plastic waste this winter.
“It is the first time that people from Luxembourg can touch something which came from their own recycling efforts,” says Schmit, adding: “It has the potential to become a fully closed loop. But we cannot accomplish this alone. We have to change the way of thinking and we are therefore doing a lot to raise awareness among local politicians.”
WeThink was among the first startups to be established at the Dudelange Innovation Hub, an incubator nurturing green techs. A resident of Dudelange, Schmit launched the company with friends in 2018 as an ecological consultancy. WeThink quickly diversified and rolled out their first major success: a smart street lighting system, in Dudelange.
“We have multiple sensors which connect every light over a gateway to a database. And the moment they capture movement, the system powers a light bulb around the object. It only activates the lights needed for the movement of that object,” Schmit explains.
He hopes to expand the technology so that the sound of a car crash would automatically trigger a call to emergency services, and to add light sensors so that street lights are only activated when it is dark.
Schmit said: “A lot of cities are contacting us because of the energy crisis and you can save up to 80% of energy with these lights.”
New products and services
During the pandemic, WeThink devised a catalogue of wood- and plastic-based, verified environmentally friendly and sustainable products, like toothbrushes, printer paper and books.
Interest in WeThink’s ecological consultancy services is meanwhile growing. Increasingly, Schmit said clients are asking the firm to verify and test the ecological credentials of different products. This process, which is conducted with a laboratory has, at best, exposed greenwashing and, at worst, revealed products that endanger human life.
For instance laboratory studies of a plastic bag used by one of the firm’s client revealed traces of a chemical that is illegal in Europe.
“Due to the greenwashing we see that there are a lot of problems,” he said.
