plastic recycling of bags
For a large percentage of industries worldwide, flexible packaging is considered to be one of the most common ways to store and sell products to consumers, due to its many advantages. However, it is the challenge of treatment of these plastics, which calls for better and more efficient ways to recycle this kind of multilayer materials.
The European Recycling Capacity
In a recent report regarding the recycling capacity of Europe, published by “PRE” (Plastic Recyclers Europe), it is revealed that between 2018 and 2020, there was an increase of 8 % of the recycling capacity for flexible polyolefin, one of the most commonly used types of materials for flexible packaging. The recycling capacity sums up to a total increase of 200 thousand tonnes and a growth from 2.5 million to 2.7 million tonnes of recycling capacity, in a 2 year duration.
In the report, it is explained that the increased recycling capacity of EU is the direct result of improvements in the collection, sorting and recycling of plastic films. Worth noting is that recycling capacities of Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland and France together, make for two-thirds of the whole recycling capacity of Europe. In addition, the average amount of polyolefin that was recycled in 2020 was estimated at 1.9 million tonnes and represented 17 % of the total demand for flexible films in the market for that year.
Challenges of Recycling – Conclusion
Although recycling has come a long way in Europe, with the aforementioned increase on the recycling rate of polyolefin as an apparent example, there is still a number of challenges that will have to be faced in order to achieve the desired 7 million tonnes of recycling capacity by the year 2030, as the president of “PRE”, Ton Evans, states in the report.
- Current lack of concrete legislation
- Low waste collection infrastructure intended for recycling
- Relatively low funding on research and development
- Challenges during design for recycling
