Recycling: Capacity Expansions and New Technologies

Recycling is gaining ground. This evolution is not only reflected by the worldwide response to the Global Recycling Day, which is held every year on March 18, but also by expanding the existing processing volumes and new plants. Over the last months, there have been quite a few announcements that new recycling capacities will come on stream in future years.

The trend has been apparent for years and seems to speed up. That applies in particular to plastics recycling. In 2021 alone, the installed capacity in Europe has grown by 17 percent, boosted by an estimated 1.75 billion Euro investment, the organization Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) gave account. With more than 730 recycling sites, the total capacity in EU27+3 would amount to 11.3 million tons. “This shows that the plastic recycling sector is an important employment generator with more than 30,000 persons across Europe”, and with 8.7 billion Euro in turnover, it would contribute substantially to the socio-economic welfare in the region. Germany, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France were the countries with the highest installed capacities, representing two-thirds of the European market. Furthermore, countries with notable growth were Poland and the Netherlands.

Worldwide, more investments in sorting and recycling facilities will certainly follow. India is heading towards a zero-waste nation and is pursuing its Waste to Wealth mission (pages 4 and 5). In addition, Latin America and the Caribbean region, which include 42 countries, are seeking a route to improve waste treatment; the different countries are unique in their demand to reduce waste and start a striking recycling strategy (page 22 onwards). In Asia, Japan strengthens plastic recycling by law (page 8). And in the USA, the number of facilities is also growing; for example, the start-up of a battery recycling plant is expected in the third quarter of this year (page 26).

Regarding tire recycling, there are technological advances, as you can read from page 36 onwards. In this area, state-of-the-art technologies can provide full control of challenging chemical recycling processes. Moreover, four partners are developing a recycling solution for used acrylic glass (page 39). Besides, the Japanese company Asahi Kasei and its partners have found a new technology for recycling carbon fiber plastic compounds (page 40). When equipped with modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, machines offer improved efficiency in the recycling process; the companies PICVISA (page 41) and Recycleye (page 42) present their solutions. Furthermore, there are some examples of equipment regarding car and metal recycling.

We hope you get a lot of new and useful information from reading this current magazine.

Yours, Brigitte Weber