While chemical recycling opens new possibilities for the circular economy, only a full lifecycle approach will be able to determine the real environmental benefits in terms of saved energy and global warming emissions, a senior EU official has said. Dealing with toxic substances contained in old plastic products – or “legacy chemicals” – is seen by many as the next frontier in recycling, if not the Holy Grail.
So-called “chemical recycling” holds the promise of isolating toxic substances contained in plastics, which are now banned in Europe, making it possible to retrieve feedstocks that can be used to manufacture products which are as good as new. “All chemicals can be broken down to simpler building blocks and made into the same or different chemicals again, even if they are heavily mixed or contaminated,” said a recent white paper by the Ellen McArthur Foundation. “The opportunity in such ‘chemical recycling’ technologies – in contrast to mechanical ones – is that they generate virgin-grade feedstock” which can then be used to “make new materials and chemicals of virgin-grade quality,” the paper said.
EuRIC, a trade association representing the European recycling industries, agrees that chemical recycling could provide a solution to address plastic waste that currently cannot be recovered through traditional “mechanical” sorting methods. “However, EuRIC wishes to underline that chemical recycling cannot be considered as the silver bullet solution as such,” it said in a position paper last year, warning that the term covers “a large number of different technologies,” many of which are still at an early stage of industrial development. Moreover, it said those different processes will face the same issues as mechanical recycling, including competition from virgin materials, which are currently cheaper to produce.
Source: Euractiv
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