Polymer recycling: its all in the mix

Looking at polymers as a whole, the decisive factor in recycling is choosing a sensible and cost effective mix of material, feedstock and thermal techniques. In 2007 around 52.5 million tonnes of plastics were processed in Europe. The most important sectors for plastic use were packaging, construction as well as automobiles and electronics, while the most commonly used polymers by far are PE (LLD/LD/HD), PP, PS, PET and PVC. In comparison to the more than 52 million tonnes of plastics used in Europe, the quantity of recycled plastic is significantly lower. In 2007 24.6 million tonnes (49.6%) were collected as waste. There are two reasons for this: one is that the product lifecycles (60% of the applications have long service lives, such as in construction), and the export of products containing or made of plastic identified was recycled. In 2007 mechanical recycling in Europe accounted for approximately 4.9 million tonnes, which represents 9% of plastic consumption. Opposing factors for recycling companies In some regions, plastic recycling is only covered in certain areas by directives (packaging, automobiles and electrical/electronics) or voluntary schemes, such as those being operated by PVC producers. Quite independent from legal requirements, for instance for dismantling and recycling routes, complex but high quality mechanical recycling has been technically and in particular commercially successful for a number of years. Examples of this are used car bumpers, PP battery cases or closure for deposit bottles. The foundation of cost effective recycling, however, is careful selection of the products being mechanically recycled, as well as a sufficiently large market that can be secured by an attractive price to performance ratio in comparison to virgin material are currently once again being the focus of attention. One of the most significant obstacles for mechanical recycling is the disassembly of component parts that often makes up more than half of the total post-use phase costs. For components that arise as a "side stream" of other industrial activities (e.g. reprocessing multi-trip bottles which includes removing all the old closures, disassembly of plastic parts from damaged automobiles and lead recovery from accumulators), breakeven is already achieved by the "primary stream" so that an economic recycling of the plastic is easier to demonstrate. Currently disassembly costs make up a significant proportion of the total costs in the mechanical recycling of automobile bumpers. In addition, the balance between costs and returns means that mechanical recycling can only break even in individual cases (e.g. recycling parts from garages where the customers bear the dismantling costs). If a high quality and therefore high priced technical thermoplastic is involved then depending on the market prices and recycling costs, mechanical recycling can also be attractive. Naturally such high priced materials are only used where their advanced property profile is demanded by the parts specification. However, from the perspective of many potential users of secondary raw materials it is not possible to recover sufficiently large quantities of such materials in the post-use phase. A look at industrial practice also shows that an increasing economic use of polymer production waste in plastics processing is taking place. Instead of passing this material stream on to external disposal partners, in-house reprocessing and re-use is increasingly being seen. New developments in the area of waste equipment recycling have concentrated mainly on post-shredder processing. They serve to achieve a separation of the polymer rich shredder light fraction from shredding end-of-life vehicles and waste equipment. In particular for end-of-life vehicles, these processes are seen as opportunities to fulfill recycling requirements without having to change the existing recycling infrastruNike Jordan Super Fly 4