RECHIP FLOOD DEFENCE – PROVIDING PROTECTION AGAINST THE ENVIRONMENT WHILST SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT

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Flooding and waste plastic pollution are 2 global environmental catastrophes that are continuing to get worse.Flood damage affects c.17000 UK properties per year, costing £1.3billion. Additionally, 5.2million(1-in-6) properties/assets, worth £200billion are in Flood Risk 3a/3b Zones (FRZ's) with \>1%/year probability of flooding causing considerable disruption&distress to those affected.Limited availability of development land is SINGLE BIGGEST barrier to meeting national housebuilding targets (300K needed/year to address targets). To meet government targets, 10% of development applications approved by Local Authorities are now in high-FRZs- planning guidance requiring use of non-permeable building materials, but the lack of effective flood-barriers for external doors renders these pointless.Climate change is expected to increase flooding incidence&impact with £1billion/year government investment required to maintain current defence levels.Meanwhile, UK's waste plastic arisings (WPA) ~5.2MNt/year, is set to increase to ~6.3MNt/year by 2030\. Due to China's 2018 WPA import ban, UK has a reprocessing gap of 350,000t/year.Despite the urgency and scale of both of these issues, technological advancements which effectively prevent flooding or efficiently recycle/reuse waste plastic are not yet available, with those under development costly, limited in width, bespoke (further expense), made from non-recyclables.Rechip's interdisciplinary team expertise including construction and engineering seeks to overcome limitations of current methods to deliver the first and only flood defence system in the world made from 100% recycled plastic using patented Rechip(tm) technology that can be installed without tools or training in minutes and provides 100% effectiveness from water ingress. This solution has a novel deployment and sealing system ensuring 0% leakage with a single board protecting up to 800mm in height. Rechip's technology takes waste plastic to create a solid rigid panel. Each panel uses the equivalent of 660 plastic bottles. This refined plastic is a new workable material that can be transformed in to a solid rigid panel.With support from Innovate UK, a 12-month programme of research is required to deliver a pre-commercial prototype internally and externally tested and certified. If successful, the solution has the potential to truly revolutionise flood protection with global exploitation potential delivering 191:1 benefit-to-cost ratio, with 5:1 being the target set my central government. The project will deliver export led growth for Rechip, healthy profits and follow on tax returns, increased employment and further opportunity for R&D investment.