2023 has been another fantastic year for MYGroup, with over £1.5million invested into recycling, recovery and renewable energy projects on site, increasing group turnover to over £20 million with an increase in employment of over 10%.
£1.5 million has been invested into recycling, recovery and renewable energy
Over 3,000 trees were planted during 2023
SchoolCycled has benefited from £90,000 direct funding from our facilities
Our group turnover for 2023 is over £20 million
We’ve also reduced our fossil fuel energy use by a further 30% in the past year.
Recovery rates for all our material types have increased as a direct result of our innovation in new machinery and our dedicated support to clients.
Our hugely successful in-store takeback schemes have seen a 25% increase in brand engagement, with clients including Harrods, Calpol and Johnson & Johnson engaged in contracted services alongside our other high-profile partnerships.
Our support for brands to remove both non-hazardous and hazardous manufacturing waste streams away from incineration to recovery solutions has almost doubled.
A further 3,000 trees were planted during the past year, with 5 acres of land on our sites being rewilded, and a further 90 acres of land purchased for return to meadow and forest habitats.
Our social enterprise, SchoolCycled has benefited from £90,000 in direct funding from our facilities to help support its growth in schools across the country, bringing the total to £320,000 in direct support since we launched the scheme.
What does MY2024 have in store?
The next 12 months are focused on more growth across various areas of the business, with over £1 million already dedicated to projects beginning in January.
Insectology
Hydrolysis / rendering facility
Bio research
Internal laboratory
Animal feed
Plastics
Textiles
Eco office
E-bike collection
Design hub
Bio-hydrogen
Carbon tracking
Insectology
Construction will get underway for our first Black Soldier Fly (BSF) farm and insect processing facility.
This first facility will take shape during the first half of the year for rearing of insects from waste streams and the subsequent extraction systems via our already established protein hydrolysis facility. This will allow us to utilise bio-based processes for reduced carbon treatment of waste while also producing low-carbon materials such as sustainable proteins and fats.
Hydrolysis / Rendering facility
Further expansion planned for our enzyme hydrolysis facility based in Goole.
Our facility currently handles waste proteins to make highly soluble enzyme-treated and stable proteins for the pet and aquatic industry. The expansion will increase capacity and add dedicated insect lines.
Bio research
R&D work will focus around algal production from waste and its cultivation.
Algae will form part of our carbon reduction plans from site emissions and provide us with materials to work into bio-based products and feed additives.
Another area is Mycelium with lab trials starting on growing and cultivation of mushrooms for use in biomaterials as a drive away from current fossil fuel packaging.
Internal laboratory
Already in build and due for completion early 2024.
We’re expanding our lab facilities to improve our research and development along with increased on-site project testing, from working with waste streams and making best use to creating new and innovative materials from them. This new fully equipped space will enable us to employ more science-based personnel; we are already working on bioplastics and textiles from waste products, including insect by-products.
Animal feed
Our aquatic and animal feed departments continue to develop new products to remove the need for fish-based proteins.
For the 8th year running we have developed and released new products and processing techniques to reduce the use of animal proteins without compromising nutritional value – vegetable, insect and algal-based products are driving our innovation. Resource from food waste and manufacturing has also been a solid area of growth.
We are proud to be winning sustainability awards for manufacturing waste protein recovery projects, all through our in-house manufacturing in the UK – helping further reduce our carbon footprint.
Plastics
To continue to extend our hard-to-recycle plastics division, we have increased our wash and separation facility capacity, and have started construction of new pelletising lines that will enable purer grade materials to go direct to manufacture. We aim to be able to support our brands in putting more recycled content back into their packaging production, drawn from their own used materials.
Our systems have been designed for flexible plastic waste, too – the ability to clean and pelletise flexibles is a key deliverable and growth area in the year ahead.
Textiles
Our textiles department has seen significant and ongoing growth, with the launch of a sustainable textiles factory and a direct focus on recovery and recycling of commercial and industrial PPE and workwear through our ReFactory brand. We are helping both workwear suppliers and the end user recover and upcycle more material with our unique end-to-end system.
In 2024 we will also launch ‘Exiled’, a luxury recovered textile brand, aimed at product returns, with repair, remanufacturing and new bio-fibre products, with a complete e-commerce system to support this network alongside our work with brand partners to support their own circular retail systems.
Eco office block
2024 will see the completion of our Hull site eco-office block; a complete rework and repair of an old 30,000sq ft office space which began in late 2023.
The office space utilises eco-build materials, including from our own waste-to-product manufacturing, solar, water harvesting, biomass heating systems and reuse of oils and other materials. This will create a new, larger space for our own teams as well as an eco-centric office structure and rental space for one-time meetings and longer-term workspace hire.
E-bike collections
Our ever-expanding fleet of electric vehicles will see some new additions with electric cargo bikes being added to the range in early 2024.
We’ll be trialling carbon-neutral city centre operations in Leeds to collect hard-to-recycle waste streams through an expansion of our existing box schemes. We will use hard-wearing reusable caddies – made in-house from waste material – instead of cardboard boxes, and offer an exchange system to city centre clients.
Design hub
Alongside our electric bike collections in Leeds, 2024 will see us open our new design hub, allowing us to expand our design, media and marketing services, as well as add a dedicated recovery and recycling maker space.
Bio-Hydrogen
We are hosting a Bio-Hydrogen facility at our Maltings site in collaboration with the Biorenewables Development Centre (BDC), part of the University of York; a trial to research using waste to create transport grade hydrogen to contribute to decarbonisation in the transport industry. As part of this project, we will work with CyanoCapture on harnessing the carbon to grow algae, a technology we now hope to build and adopt across our facilities to not only reduce carbon, but also support our biomaterials production.
Carbon tracking
Tracking client material carbon outputs day-to-day will allow us to engage to plan improvements and reductions. We conduct active LCA’s and carbon mapping for some of our services and we will be increasing the level of externally validated processes to support our clients on their carbon reduction goals.
MYBoard has been the driving force of growth at our Hull facilities, with 2024 set to see us doubling our capacity with a 2nd set of mills due for installation in May.
Taking even more hard-to-recycle materials – and saving more trees by utilising this recycled building material as a direct replacement for wood – we will continue to target the three main core markets, cosmetics, medical and ocean plastics. Our dedicated ‘Ocean Positive Board’ was also released in 2023, manufactured entirely from mixed ocean plastics, with over 100 tons made into boards and then remanufactured into goods, making it one of the most impactful UK recycling systems for the worst ocean plastics.
Learn more about MYBoard here.
MYGroup is a leading-edge, disruptive waste management and recycling business, calling upon a series of advanced technologies and processes to ‘recycle the unrecyclable’.
Established for over 30 years, MYGroup is trusted by some of the largest brands and organisations in the UK to process up to 800,000 tons of waste a year, fully in-house and through transparent procedures across four state-of-the-art facilities in Yorkshire.
The company provides cost-effective, end-to-end collection, processing and recycling services, accredited and certified for all types of waste material, from agricultural, construction, clinical and hazardous, to cosmetics, food, textiles and plastic.
We want to ‘close the loop’ on all types of waste – we’re committed to continuous investment and service improvements to achieve this aim – diverting from landfill and incineration.
MYGroup is also a leader in the processing of unusable and surplus stock, working with some of the biggest and most well-known brands, internationally, to securely destroy, remanufacture or re-use unused items, from food, cosmetics, home care, clothing and fabrics to machinery and electronics.
We also work with clients and organisations on outreach and educational activities relating to sustainable living and recycling. This includes the SchoolCycled™ programme – live in primary schools across the UK – providing resources for children and encouraging recycling in school, at home and out and about with a series of rewards and incentives.
MYGroup’s ReFactory™ team specialises in remanufacturing and upcycling various waste materials, notably plastics and textiles, into new products.
This includes the manufacture of MYboard™, a material similar in consistency to plywood, used widely for construction, joinery, shop and event fittings, as well as furniture for commercial and community settings, such as schools.
The team also manufactures products from waste for re-sale and use by brands and partners – from bags and accessories to seasonal items.
The ReFactory sustainable textiles factory at our Hull site – through a £500k investment – sees waste textiles remanufactured end-to-end into new products, leading the charge in reducing the environmental impact of and promoting circularity in the industry.
