Recycled (Bio)Plastics and (Bio)Plastic Composites: A Trade Opportunity in a Green Future

Abstract

Today’s world is at the point where almost everyone realizes the usefulness of going green. Due to so-called global warming, there is an urgent need to find solutions to help the Earth and move towards a green future. Many worldwide events are focusing on the global technologies in plastics, bioplastic production, the recycling industry, and waste management where the goal is to turn plastic waste into a trade opportunity among the industrialists and manufacturers. The present work aims to review the recycling process via analyzing the recycling of thermoplastic, thermoset polymers, biopolymers, and their complex composite systems, such as fiber-reinforced polymers and nanocomposites. Moreover, it will be highlighted how the frame of the waste management, increasing the materials specificity, cleanliness, and a low level of collected material contamination will increase the potential recycling of plastics and bioplastics-based materials. At the same time, to have a real and approachable trade opportunity in recycling, it needs to implement an integrated single market for secondary raw materials.

A Journey from Processing to Recycling of Multilayer Waste Films: A Review of Main Challenges and Prospects

“…Furthermore, we have to consider also that those bio-based materials are very sensitive to humidity, thermal, and/or hydrolytic degradation, and the loss of their physical, mechanical properties is noted up to the various steps of mechanical recycling. As reported in the recent review of Morici E. et al [34], only homogeneous (bio)polymers-based materials could successfully perform the chemolysis through glycolysis, aminolysis, methanolysis, alcoholysis, and hydrolysis. For heterogeneous biobased materials, the cracking and gasification could be considered more appropriate methodologies.…”

“…Nowadays, the plastic industry is researching alternatives to replace fossil sources with renewable resources and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). The new strategy is all along the value chain as displayed in Figure 2: from product design to recycling, then focusing on converting more waste into recyclates, maximizing resource efficiency, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions [32,34].…”

“…Cosate de Andrade et al [49] presented a Life Cycle Analysis of PLA comparing chemical recycling, mechanical recycling, and composting, and they found that mechanical recycling had the least environmental impact, followed by chemical recycling and, lastly, composting, when considering the climate change, human toxicity, and fossil depletion categories. Whereas the recycling of bio-based polymers and their composites must be further investigated and better addressed, considering the target applications for these materials and for a successful recycling process, the bioplastic and their composites waste stream must be collected separately to the other plastic waste stream [23,34]. Furthermore, we have to consider also that those bio-based materials are very sensitive to humidity, thermal, and/or hydrolytic degradation, and the loss of their physical, mechanical properties is noted up to the various steps of mechanical recycling.…”

Evaluation of Marker Materials and Spectroscopic Methods for Tracer-Based Sorting of Plastic Wastes

“…Furthermore, in the EU Directive 2012/19/EU on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling targets between 55–80 wt.% over all materials were specified, that are impossible to meet without increasing the recycling of the plastic components from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) [ 10 ]. The biggest technical challenge is that collected plastic waste is in general a heterogenic mix of different polymer types as well as organic, inorganic, and metal contaminants, depending on the disposal and collecting scheme [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. The largest polymer streams are polyethylene (PE) types—i.e., high-density polyethylene (PE-HD), low-density polyethylene (PE-LD), linear-low-density polyethylene (PE-LLD), middle-density polyethylene (PE-MD), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polystyrene-expendable (PS-E), and polyvinylchloride (PVC), which are mainly used for the packaging, construction, automotive or electric and electronic sector [ 2 ].…”

“…Within the recycling process, almost any divergence is considered as an impurity and leads to a loss of quality of the recycled material [ 11 ]. Separate collection by polymer type or plastic product (e.g., for PET bottles) or mechanical pre-treatment are measures among many to consequently improve quality of input materials or feedstock for mechanical, chemical, enzymatic, or thermal recycling of plastics [ 13 ]. The current state-of-the-art automatic sorting systems for pre-treatment and plastic separation are capable of sorting different bulk plastics and may very quickly reach their operational limit if the input material stream is too heterogeneous in terms of size, shape, and material quality.…”