Feasibility of chemical recycling (experts opinion)
Main Takeaways
- Chemical recycling shows many advantages for materials and elements that are otherwise difficult to process with conventional recycling, such as the removal of colors and chemical substances, but the environmental impact is a challenge.
- For the near future, chemical recycling is expected to be used for specific waste streams and is seen as complementary to conventional mechanical recycling.
Expert 1:
I'm looking forward to welcome chemical recycling as well on large-scale next to mechanical
recycling. They complement each other I think. We as designers sometimes need to make
decisions where recycled materials based upon mechanically recycling are simply not an
option. Or the architecture has to be made in such way. Some materials cannot be retrieved
by mechanical recycling while still having enough commercial value adding to the market. And
in these cases, we could consider design for chemical recycling as very welcome next to
mechanical recycling.
Expert 2:
The quality of the material which is coming out of a chemical recycling process is absolutely
equal to a primary raw material. And that's let’s say needed for a lot of appliances we are
talking about as household appliance industry, for example all the appliances that are in
contact with food, we have to make sure that there is really nothing in which is chemically
problematic and that can then appear in the food of our customers that's why for those plastic
streams chemical recycling is something you look into the future but it has to be scaled up. At
the moment the capacities are under exceeding the demand we would have for recycled
plastics.
Expert 3:
We need quality materials and the big challenge I think is, one big challenge is aesthetics. To
be able to use light colors without impurities and stuff like that. And then I think, that we do
see continuous evolution improvement over the years, sorting processes are becoming better,
filtering processes to get cleaner materials, they are more useful. And then I think it’s
important to distinguish between what we expect and what we hope for is that, there is a bit
of buzz about what is called chemical recycling. But in reality, that is just still mostly a
hypothesis or a pilot scale project. And you see that it’s basically it’s not all like, I don’t know
if it’s 98 or 99 % of all the recycled plastics is mechanically recycled. And we believe that for
the future that it will probably remain like this. We understand that there are expectations
and hopes on chemical recycling. But, we for the moment, we should still continue to also
focus on mechanical recycling. One reason is that the chemical recycling has some challenges
when it comes to the carbon footprint and from our point of view, it is not efficient just to
recycle a material. It should also be done as efficiently as possible.
Improving the recycling process (expert opinion)
Main takeaways
- New pre-sorting technologies for household appliances where products with similar materials are recognized and separated before being shredded (using AI, for instance) can optimize the recycling process.
- Dissolution is a promising new technology that can break down specific polymers.
Expert 1:
We are today for most of the so-called collection groups, we are in highly automated relatively
big shredding processes, so it goes everything into a big shredder everything is milled to small
pieces and then the recyclers try to sort the small pieces at the end of the pipe. And what my
hope is that we will come to a more let’s say half automated sorting process somewhere at
the beginning of the recycling process so that we can get bigger pieces of material out which
belong together and therefore have a higher efficiency also in the sorting process
Expert 2:
Lately you have dissolution technology coming up, where it is possible to separate the polymer
from certain additives. I think that's definitely a very promising technology for certain
polymers definitely not for all of them. But it is quite promising because it will allow us to
move away from just simply being able to produce black but also being able to produce other
colors from recycled plastics. Also, it would allow us to at least partly recycle plastics that
today cannot be recycled because they contain restricted substances like certain brominated
flame retardants.
Expert 3:
There is maybe another development. Which is not totally linked to plastic but more to the
WEEE waste, it is the development of artificial intelligence and deep learning in the waste
sector. I don't know but maybe in the future it can contribute to the pre-sorting of products,
and why not according to the plastic use in it. And it will maybe help to change the minds. So
today we try to collect massive quantity of products with many kinds of plastics inside, we
shred it and afterwards we try to sort the plastics. Maybe in the future if we can pre-sort
products, maybe saying that in this volume we will have more PP and in this one more ABS, it
will be easier at the end to sort. So, it is really a far development. I don’t know if it will be
efficient or useful but why not, it's more global I would say.
Collaborating towards a circular economy (experts opinion)
Good to know the status of the recycling industry in 2021.
Main takeaways
- Considering the technologies and needs of other stakeholders across the value chain in the design of a product can improve the process of retrieving and recycling materials out of products.
- Collaboration between producers, collectors and recyclers is essential towards creating standards for recycled materials.
- The role of recyclers is shifting from waste processors to producers of high-quality recycled materials.
Expert 1:
The waste management industry being a reactive industry will not be the starting point for
change, neither technology developments and neither waste reduction. So, I think the starting
point or the solution is the design of products. So, paying a lot of effort in designs to facilitate
the waste management industry and not only the usage phase for consumers but focus on
more aspects within the whole value chain determines also the effort and methods to retrieve
materials. And that is actually the starting point for disruptive change in technology
developments I would say. In that case we're not talking anymore about changes that will
make the industry slightly better or more efficient than they are now but what probably can
make giant steps that will heavily increase material recovery figures.
Expert 2:
From our point, what we have set as one of our leading topics is that we want to drive the
uptake of recycled plastics, that is our role. Obviously also to enable recycling of the products,
but it’s not enough, I think we need to move beyond making claims about recyclability of
products and to walk the talk to say so, it’s also to use the material that comes out of the
recycling process. Then we start to speak. And that has been our philosophy, we should be
part of this circle, that we work together with recyclers, collection systems, etc. etc. all parts
of the chain and make sure that some part of the materials at least come back into our
products. One thing that is interesting right now that started a couple of years ago is the
discussions about creating standards, for standard requirements, standard specifications, for
recycled plastics. So that for example, a certain application in a whitegoods appliance or a car,
you define the characteristics that are required for that type of material. By that, we are able
to strengthen the demand and facilitate for the recycler. So, with some limits they can expect
to have a product that is suitable for more than one customer.
Expert 3:
The challenge for the recycler as I understood from them is that basically each of their
customers come and say about, I have, they’re same parts, but different requirements. That
makes it a challenge for the recyclers. The recyclers are usually small organizations, so their
room for adaptation is less than for huge chemical companies. So, to facilitate the process
trying to have as little variation as possible, between the different customers.
Expert 4:
I think recyclers are developing a real expertise about the development of high quality
recycled plastics that can be seen as a new material, as virgin it is a new material. From my
point of view, recyclers are changing and are not any more just people who can just sort and
granulate plastic waste. They are producing new recycled materials.
Expert 5:
We come from simple waste management where we are actually going to evolve into
becoming producers, raw material producers. So, it's really a mind shift going away from low
cost towards producing high value materials. So where today it’s still on processing at the
lowest cost possible, the focus has to shift much more on to the quality of the end material.
Expert 6:
I hope that we will see a bit more specialization in the recycling processes, so that one or the
other recyclers will be specialized on different streams, for example mobile phones or
notebooks or, we have this for example for the fridges. For the fridges we have highly specialized recyclers that only treat fridges, but for most of the smaller household appliances and also for the large white goods outside the fridges, those appliances go to let’s say facilities,
where also cars for example are treated. And to treat a car I think it's substantial different
compared to washing machines. But today the same organization do the same. And I think
that’s always not good if you do too many things that are different, you cannot be efficient
and you cannot be specialized.
Expert 7:
I am looking really much forward to the cooperation actually between producers and
recyclers, so closer cooperation where producers learn from the recyclers to really see how
they can adjust their designs better so that plastics are easier to retrieve and easier to recycle.
And I really believe that they need to find each other and both, on both sides they need to
improve or innovate and not only demand from the other that they need to look at their
process a certain way. And they can do it or improve it or change the way they do things at
the moment
So, they both need to change. And I’m looking forward to seeing developments towards that
cooperation more and more.