A significant amount of plastic waste is downcycled into products of much lower quality than compared to their original condition. Packaging sold in the supermarkets rarely gets returned as recycled packaging to the supermarket shelves, and today’s food packaging is not recycled into new food packaging on a wide scale. Instead, it is used for other applications, and these applications do not have to fulfill the same, strict, quality criteria for food packaging. Instead, this approach maintains the demand for new virgin materials.
In order to increase the quality of the secondary raw materials resulting from recycling of plastic packaging, two developments must take place:
- A significant amount of the plastic packaging, which is currently on the market, must be designed in a way, which allows for high-quality recycling. Too many products are made from multilayer material, harmful amounts of printing inks or non-washable labels that compromise quality.
- Even though significant improvements have been made in the past few years, existing infrastructurecapacity, and sorting technologies for mechanical, as well as chemical recycling of plastic packaging must be improved.
Please contact us if you wish to collaborate regarding plastics recycling.
