Material Focus: MYBoard™: Creating a new industry for 'unrecyclable' plastic waste

One of ReFactory's signature materials is MYBoard: A pressed, composite board made entirely from plastic waste. Not the clean, pre-sorted, easy-to-process kind, but the plastic that conventional recycling systems write off as ‘unrecyclable’.

We use MYBoard across multiple service lines, and it underpins much of our ReTail production range.

Five million tonnes of plastic are consumed in the UK every year. More than half of that is packaging. Around 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging are discarded in UK homes annually, equating to roughly 76kg per person.

Around three-quarters of this volume ends up in landfill. The reason isn't a lack of intention, but a lack of infrastructure. Mixed-material packaging, contaminated food trays, foil-backed blister packs, laminated wrap, beauty and cosmetics empties – local authority systems aren't built for them, and even most established, specialist recyclers can’t move to accommodate.

This material makes up what our parent company, MYGroup, calls 'the lost 25%' – waste that falls outside the system entirely – and MYBoard is one of the ways to turn the tide.

How MYBoard is created

The MYBoard production process starts with collection through MYGroup's take-back schemes, run in partnership with major UK retailers, hospitals and other settings. Collected plastic arrives at MYGroup's specialist facility in Hull, where it is sorted, washed and shredded into a fine granulate.

The granulate is then heat-pressed into a solid three-layer board: a dense core between two smooth outer skins. The result is a smooth, plywood-like material that's waterproof, UV-stable, fire-rated and resistant to chemicals and graffiti.

Available in a range of colours, each board carries a distinctive speckled pattern drawn from the makeup of the plastic it came from. No two batches look identical. Every board carries the visible trace of its previous life.

A viable wood replacement

MYBoard behaves like wood – formable, cuttable, drillable – but outlasts it in durability. It won't rot, warp, splinter or need treating. For ReFactory joinery, construction, furniture, displays and outdoor applications, it also does the job timber does without felling a single tree. And because it's manufactured entirely from waste, there's no virgin material in the equation.

MYBoard is the backbone of our ReTail service line, where we manufacture circular brand and retail experiences that include furniture, objects and installations, and also supports our ReSpoke commissions.

If you can build it from plywood, you can build it from MYBoard. The material is the clearest expression of how ReFactory works. We use what's left – the awkward, mixed, written-off plastic that would otherwise sit in landfill for centuries — and transform it into something worth using again. That's not a sustainability claim, but a material specification.

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