How can plastic waste be converted into products of value? This is the question explored by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste in a recent report. Join us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by this issue with Martyn Tickner, Chief Advisor of Circular Solutions at the Alliance.
Let’s start with an introduction to the latest playbook – why was it created, and what are the key messages?
‘Capturing Value Through Basic Mechanical Recycling of Mixed Plastic Waste’, highlights a relatively low carbon means of capturing value from mixed plastic waste streams which are challenging to recycle economically.
Both environmental and economic value are derived from the basic mechanical recycling systems that contributed to this solution model. The playbook documents low-cost, carbon-efficient recycling solutions that convert mixed-waste streams into usable products, ensuring the recovered plastic is kept in circulation.
For countries at an early stage of waste management maturity, basic mechanical recycling is a practical means of kickstarting recycling economies. The same technology can however also be deployed in developed nations addressing residual streams from more mature recycling systems.
Based on the learnings from our on-ground projects, the playbooks catalogue challenges, lessons learned, and enabling conditions necessary for success so that like-minded organisations can adopt, scale, and replicate these solutions to promote the growth of a circular economy.
From a more general perspective, insiders we’ve spoken to in recent times have expressed concern regarding alarming downward trends in the EU plastics recycling market. Companies are going out of business, and in many cases, the financials aren’t making sense. What exactly is happening here, and what can be done to arrest this slide?
For more advanced solutions beyond the basic recycling described in the Playbook, incentives are required to encourage investment into recycling – especially considering the current weak global economy which has resulted in low prices for virgin plastics.
Such incentives take the form of mandatory recycling and recycled content targets, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, investment incentives and taxes. These incentives are rapidly emerging, through the adoption of EPR in many countries across the world, and policies such as the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulations (PPWR).
However, it can take several years to bring these to the point of impact; in the interim, recycling companies are struggling to remain financially viable and investment in new capacity is limited. What is encouraging, however, is the number of acquisitions of small recycling companies by multinationals, which will bring the capital and focus on quality management required to meet future opportunities. Additionally, the European Commission recently approved a 500-million-euro French scheme to support chemical recycling investments.
The playbook looks at methods for converting mixed-waste streams into “usable products” in countries that have advanced waste management systems, as well as ones that don’t. How would you respond to people who might argue that this constitutes “downcycling”? Could you unpack this, and give some examples of potential end uses?
This playbook focuses on how mixed plastic waste can be reintroduced into the value chain by creating products that have value and utility, even if into different applications than the original.
This approach helps to keep plastics from being wasted, reducing the use of virgin plastic in lower quality applications, and potentially addressing the challenges of other industries – for example providing lumber substitutes in regions where timber is not abundant, construction materials where construction quality sand is expensive, or even binders for use in roads, wood chipboards etc.
The concept of a circular economy is to keep materials in circulation where possible. Closed-loop solutions where material is recycled back to the original application are good, maintaining value and producer accountability.
However, such solutions may be very carbon intensive, and a better solution is the use of plastic waste in lower-value or non-plastic applications. Despite the negative connotations of the word, “downcycling” will be an important element and positive contributor to the future circular economy of plastics.
The Alliance is involved in projects that put these words into action in a number of developing countries. What is one particularly successful initiative that stands out to you?
CDRC Global is an initiative to capture value from the world’s mixed plastic waste by converting it into RESIN8™—an eco-aggregate manufactured through basic mechanical recycling which can help improve the strength and thermal properties of concrete, reducing the need for carbon-intensive and ecologically damaging excavation and transportation of traditional concrete aggregate including sand and gravel.
The market for structural cement is an order of magnitude larger than the global production of plastic, and CRDC has developed the technology further to allow carbon capture from cement factories and even the trucks delivering cement.
The construction industry is necessarily conservative, requiring new materials to be proven in long-term application before rapid adoption, and this is constraining the growth of CRDC. The potential of such applications to address waste streams is enormous however, and there are other areas where such an approach can be adopted. Hence our support for “basic recycling” – low-cost, carbon-efficient solutions for challenges beyond plastic waste.
How can projects and initiatives like this be scaled across countries and regions?
By documenting the enabling conditions necessary to implement solutions to plastic waste, our objective is to share our knowledge so that like-minded organisations can build on what we have done.
The Alliance hopes that the playbooks will encourage other organisations across the plastics ecosystem to replicate and scale these solutions in order to maximise impact and accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastics.
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