New Clean Planet Facility Converts Waste Plastic to Sustainable Aviation Fuel

A section of Clean Planet's Sustainability Innovation Center pilot facility.

May 4, 2026

A major breakthrough in tackling both waste plastic and aviation emissions has been marked with the opening of what Clean Planet Technologies claims to be is the world’s first waste plastics to Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) pilot facility.

First established in 2023, Clean Planet Technologies holds two patents for the upgrading of waste plastics to "ultra, clean, ultra-low sulphur high premium hydroprocessed oils and fuels," according to its website.

Outside of the new pilot facility creating SAF from waste plastics in Discovery Park, Kent, UK.

Dedicated to converting hard-to-recycle waste plastics into SAF, the new Sustainability Innovation Center is based at Discovery Park in Kent, U.K., and is operated by Clean Planet Technologies. The Center is set up to research and develop new technologies to deal with non-recyclable plastic waste, beginning with conversion into jet fuel.

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The U.K. creates 5 million tons of waste plastics each year, 80 percent of which cannot be recycled, such as carrier bags and food packaging film. Globally the world’s commercial aircraft consume between 7 and 8 million barrels of jet fuel per day, equivalent to 7-8 percent of total global daily oil demand.

Dr. Andrew Odjo gives a tour of the technology and oils to a selection of invited guests at the opening.

“Our process first heats the waste plastic with a chemical reaction to turn it into a liquid, rather than burning it. This is then treated with our patented process to remove impurities and create SAF that meets stringent commercial aviation specifications," said Dr. Andrew Odjo, CEO at Clean Planet Technologies.

The pilot facility plays a critical role in bridging innovation and commercial development, integrating several stages into one single, controlled system optimized to transform hard-to-recycle plastics into SAF. It has been designed to support fuel and feedstock testing, validation and progression through the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) qualification process, with financial support already in place from the Department for Transport-funded UK SAF Clearing House.

Left to Right: Dr. Andrew Odjo (CP Group CTO and leader of the CPTech project), Matthew Jee (UK SAF Clearing House Director), Dr. Katerina Garyfalou (Chief Operating Officer, Clean Planet Technologies) and Bertie Stephens (CEO of Clean Planet Group ), at the new facility.

The key steps of the process are:

Shredding: Waste plastics are pre-processed and shredded to a uniform size.
Pyrolysis: The material is fed into one of the center’s two pyrolysis units, with the largest capable of processing up to 1 ton of plastic per day. In this oxygen-free environment, the plastics are thermocatalytically converted into a synthetic crude oil. This melts the plastic, rather than burning it.
Purification: Impurities and contaminants in the synthetic crude oil are removed.
Distillation: The pyrolysis oil is transferred to a distillation unit, where it is separated into relevant fractions and optimized for upgrading into higher-value fuels.
Upgrading: The fractions are then processed through Clean Planet Technologies’ patented hydroprocessing system, which uses hydrogen to further remove impurities, and transform the properties of the product to meet stringent SAF specifications.
SAF product: The resulting ultra-clean, ultra-low sulphur fuel suitable for aviation use is sent for testing, blending and evaluation as part of the ASTM qualification pathway as SAF.

The fundamentals of the process (pyrolysis, purification, distillation and hydroprocessing) are all technologies which are currently used independently at commercial scale, meaning scaling up the process is not a challenge.

“Every day 100,000 commercial flights fly globally. At the same time, 600,000 tons of non-recyclable waste plastics enter the environment globally. Our pilot facility will demonstrate this waste can be turned into a premium product with a quantifiable commercial demand, as well as reducing the lifecycle carbon footprint of the aviation industry. We monitor how much energy the process uses, and overall, it cuts the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70 percent compared to traditional fossil jet fuel," Odjo said.

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