How to Define the Challenges of Plastic Value Chain in Europe
Recycling plastics is becoming more mainstream, but what are the challenges that slow down its development? The challenges, along with technological issues and the knowledge gaps, are studied in the master’s thesis Identifying Challenges, Technology and Knowledge Gaps Across Plastics Value Chain with a Focus on Recycling in Circular Economy by Mikko Myrä from LUT University, Finland.
The relevance of the circular economy for plastics is more significant than ever before. The European Union (EU) has established ambitious recycling targets for plastic waste, and businesses are actively embracing the opportunities presented by the circular economy.
Traditionally, the plastic value chain has aligned with a linear economy. This linear approach has resulted in environmental harm, including the accumulation of plastic waste on land and in marine environments, as well as pollution from the use of fossil-based raw materials and incineration.
Now, the circular economy has emerged as a viable alternative, and efforts to transition towards a circular economy for plastics are underway. Nevertheless, there are various challenges that impede this transition. Shifting to a circular economy requires changes throughout the entire value chain, which has been designed to accommodate a linear economy.
Challenges Related to Plastic Recycling
The thesis focused on scientific and operational bottlenecks of EU’s circular economy across entire plastics recycling value chain. The study is based on detailed review and thematic analysis of technical and regulatory literature, stakeholder interviews, and perspective of the scientific community collected via questionnaire.
Based on the results, Myrä has identified and categorised the main challenges related to plastic recycling as following:
Feedstock Acquisition and Ownership
The feedstock rate for well sorted and high value plastics lags behind the recycling capacity. The required feedstock for chemical recycling can be enhanced by high throughput technologies such as Modix-extruder (VTT, Finland) which reduce the bulk density of flexible plastics by 100 times, without additional pretreatment. The fragmented waste ownership within EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility), private and public waste management is considered as an obstacle for stable feedstock and investment in new sorting facilities.
Sorting Efficiency
Sorting quality and quantity for both separate and mixed collection needs to improve especially for flexible plastics. Chemical recycling should complement the mechanical recycling when sorted plastics are not suitable for mechanical recycling. Standardised and harmonised analysis and labelling of sorted plastics are needed to created trust, stable quality, and demand-pull.
Technological Advancement
Further investment in sorting and recycling technologies are needed to enhance the quantity and quality of waste plastic input, recycling costs and output quality. Specifically, to increase the resilience of mechanical recycling for complex feedstock and reduce the cost of chemical recycling.
Acceptance of Recyclates
Demand-pull for recycled plastics requires further investment and incentives on design for recyclability and design from recycling, stable and stream specific regulations on plastic safety, stable quality and harmonised recyclate data quality level labelling.
Regulations
Policies should enable stable and clear regulatory framework (e.g., regulations on chemicals) along with application and quality specific collection and recycling targets.
This study also concluded with the widely agreed-upon fact that a circular economy for plastics requires collaboration across all stakeholders and a multi-faceted approach.