Closing the circle on plastic waste – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

Plastic packaging accounts for somewhere around 40 % of the in general demand for plastic in Europe. Though operate is remaining finished to recuperate and recycle plastic squander, the EU still generates 25 million tonnes of it every single 12 months, of which only thirty % is recycled, 39 % is incinerated and 31 % finishes up in landfill.

Associates in the EU-funded CIRC-PACK task have set on their own the undertaking of making a much more sustainable plastic packaging worth chain by operating on several fronts to develop new and much more sustainable merchandise, procedures and company designs.

‘CIRC-PACK delivers with each other partners from each and every phase of the plastic packaging cycle,’ suggests task supervisor Montserrat Lanero of Fundación CIRCE: Centro de Investigación de Recursos y Consumos Energeticos in Spain. ‘Our intention is to make new associations involving the distinctive partners that direct to improvements in the whole system and lay the foundations of a new bio-primarily based worth chain.’

New components and far better recyclability

The task is checking out and creating new feedstocks not primarily based on fossil fuels but on cleaner, much more eco-friendly choices. This will permit the generation of new-generation bio-primarily based plastic packaging designed totally of raw components from renewable resources and recycled squander, this kind of as trays, bottles, espresso capsules, jars, car or truck parts and pallets. These components will also be biodegradable and compostable.

Also, partners are operating to decrease as much as probable the squander created at each and every phase of the worth chain, transforming it into new resources that could be reintroduced into the cycle in line with the principles of a round overall economy.

CIRC-PACK’s plans – improving upon recyclability, improving biodegradability and supporting the generation of new bio-primarily based and compostable plastics – are concentrated on improving upon soon after-use plastic overall economy as a result of a multi-sectorial strategy, in 3 main sectors: the automotive, generation and recycling of absorbent cleanliness merchandise, and packaging film.

In addition, actions will boost current sorting and recycling procedures as a result of an on line checking system, designed in the course of the CIRC-PACK task. This will boost the restoration fees and excellent dependability of the recycled components in line with the specifications of the probable stop-end users.

Business alternatives

In the car sector, the task is operating closely with producers to boost the recycling charge of plastic-primarily based parts of automobiles and boost procedures to recuperate and reuse them.

The workforce is also operating with producers to valorise the cellulose squander from the recycling of absorbent cleanliness merchandise, therefore making bio-primarily based and biodegradable polymers from anything that until now has been considered to be purely squander.
New eco-structure of packaging is also remaining executed to decrease the stop-of-lifetime influence of multi-material and multilayer packaging, and to facilitate the separation of components for recycling.

In addition, the approach of accumulating, classifying and recovering plastic squander will be re-evaluated according to the new structure to raise efficiency and improve the proportion of squander that is recycled. CIRC-PACK will analyse current legal constraints, bottlenecks and other non-technological obstacles that are hindering the optimisation of this worth chain.

‘We expect CIRC-PACK to make new company alternatives, for huge businesses and SMEs, both equally within the task and much more extensively. We want to improve the standpoint from thinking of the products on its own to conceiving it as component of the generation, usage, disposal system,’ suggests Lanero.

The in general goal is to endorse transition to a round overall economy – one that contributes to the EU’s squander management and recycling targets by 2030.