Paulínia’s Living Park will have benches, wastebaskets and flower vases made of recycled plastic developed by the pool of companies, Acinplas, national leader in the transformation of plastic packaging for fruits and vegetables used in retail chains. The products will be made into plastic wood made from discarded raw materials from the transformer’s units and neighboring companies. It will then undergo an extrusion process in a special machine developed by one of the Acinplas pool’s member companies, which has the capacity to recycle dirty and wet plastic.

These sustainable pieces shall also be produced for the green belt, a 150 hectare section of the Atlantic Forest located in the area surrounding the Braskem unit in Maceió (AL). For Paulínia’s Park, the Acinplas pool has already produced 5 sets of recyclable wastebaskets, 21 common wastebaskets, 54 separate benches, 18 tables (small) for games with 4 stools, 12 tables (large) for picnics with two benches, 420m² of deck floor and nine 70x70cm flower vases. The company will produce 110 benches, 1500m² of platform, 40 flower vases and 50 wastebaskets for the Alagoas green belt.

"We want to make our process even cheaper and contribute towards the search for solutions in relation to the correct disposal of plastic and the generation of work for the low-income population, which can derive a professional activity from this transformation," affirms the president of the Acinplas pool of companies, Jorge Suzuki, for whom global actions for preservation of the environment will guarantee a better quality of life to the next generations.

Sustainability is already part of the culture at the pool of companies, one of the first to sign a contract with Braskem for the purchase of green polyethylene, a resin made from sugarcane ethanol, a renewable raw material. The Acinplas pool of companies is comprised of Suzuki, Koba, Voti, Plasa and Recicladora Tashiro&Takata, companies located in Aracaju and in several cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, such as Estância Velha, Ivoti, Dois Irmãos and Sapiranga.  Every year, the Acinplas pool of companies transforms 12 thousand tons of polyethylene, which represents about 50% of the product’s market in Brazil. Average revenues reach R$ 150 million per annum.

Commitment with sustainability

The living park is being built by Braskem on 300 thousand m2 with investments of more than R$ 3 million and within the concepts of sustainability to attend the population of Paulínea and surrounding region, which today includes more than 10 thousand inhabitants. With its inauguration projected for the second semester of 2010, the park will have a permanent preservation area (PPA) near several springs and it will also preserve a section of Atlantic Forest, one of the world’s richest forests in biodiversity.

The Maceió green belt has an Environmental Education Center where courses are given on hydroponics, landscaping and beekeeping. It receives more than 15 thousand visits per year. With this belt, it was possible to recover the soil, restore the dunes and reconstitute 20 hectares of forest. Besides that, more than 300 wild animals were introduced and 180 thousand saplings of 200 vegetal species were planted. In 1995, it was granted the IBAMA certificate as a Conservationist Nursery of Wild Brazilian Fauna and, in 2005, it was given the Advanced Post of the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve, granted by UNESCO’s Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve’s National Council.