Plastic Recycling Technologies Still Have Long Development Ahead, Expert Argues
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 09:27:41
Recycling industry researcher Rob de Ruiter has said that although a lot of progress is being made in the field of plastics recycling, it will be at least a decade before materials of this type can be processed chemically.
Lets Recycle reports that the comments were made at the World Recycling Convention 2019, held this month in Budapest, with de Ruiter arguing that for the foreseeable future it would be necessary to rely on existing mechanical means of dealing with plastics for the purposes of sustainability.
He did, however, claim that there were some promising avenues being explored at the moment, with the long-term likelihood being that a completely chemical approach to dealing with various kinds of waste plastic would be adopted in order to make new materials.
It will take around five years before demonstrations of emerging chemical recycling processes are deemed to be commercially viable, followed by a further period in which they will be made ready for commercial rollout.
Ultimately, for this type of plastics recycling to become profitable it will need to be significantly refined and a number of processing plants will need to be built across Europe.
Single-use plastics have become the target of a lot of campaigning in the past couple of years, with various environmentalists pointing out that they pose the biggest threat to the ecosystem at the moment. It is also important to consider the plastics used in other commercial products, such as old mobile phones, which need to be reclaimed and recycled once the devices come to the end of their usable life span.
Ultimately, consumers are still being urged to cut down on their single-use plastic consumption and also to recycle as many of the waste materials they produce as is possible.
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