Page 58 from: What’s inside issue #4?
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NEW SITE TO TACKLE ITALY’S GROWING
POLYOLEFIN FILM WASTE STREAM
Dutch tech company Bluealp is providing pyrolysis technology
to a new treatment plant being built in Italy.
Waste management firm Recupero Etico Sostenibile (RES) is set-
ting up a chemical recycling hub for plastic scrap next to its exist-
ing mechanical recycling facilities in Pettoranello del Molise. The
company has signed a contract with Bluealp for the facility to be
ready in mid-2026.
Located 100km north of Naples, it will be able to treat 20 000
tonnes of plastic scrap per year. The input material will mostly con-
sist of hard-to-recycle waste such as polyolefin film fractions.
A spike in demand for recycled content in the fast-moving con-
sumer goods market sparked the collaboration. The global poly-
olefin films market was worth EUR 92.2 billion in 2022 and is
expected to hit EUR 156 billion by 2032.
Installed recycling capacity of flexible polyolefins grew notably by
8% from 2018 to 2020. In two years, capacity reached 2.7 million
tonnes at an estimated 200 recycling facilities, a new study shows.
The biggest facilities can process over 40 000 tonnes per annum.
Italy is among those with the biggest recycling capacity, including
Germany, Spain, Poland and the Benelux.
AUSTRIA, WALES AND TAIWAN ARE BEST MUNICIPAL RECYCLERS
Austria has been announced as the world’s best country for
recycling in a new study which examined the recycling per-
formance of 48 countries.
Research by Reloop and Eunomia Research and Consulting
puts Wales in second place and Taiwan in third.
ELECTIONS CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING –
AND NOTHING
The general election in the UK is likely to mean another delay in the coun-
try’s snail-like progress to a coherent recycling policy. This year, after 14
years in office, the Conservative Government came up with a strategy
called ‘Simpler Recycling’.
By Robin Latchem
When the scheme was announced in 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
announced he was scrapping proposals for ‘seven bins in every household’.
What was remarkable was that there had never been any proposals for seven
bins. It summed up the recent history of UK policy in this area: little application
from the politicians responsible for recycling (who rarely stay in post for more
than a year) and a preference for headlines ahead of addressing the real issues.
In truth, I’m being unfair to the UK nations. Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland have significant autonomy in this area and a long-term approach from
the Welsh Government, for example, has ensured Wales has one of the best
household recycling rates in the world, well above the targets previously by the
EU, for example.
But England’s performance has been a dead weight on the overall UK recycling
rate throughout the years. England accounts for about 85% of the UK popula-
tion so the overall rate was always short of EU targets.
‘Simpler Recycling’ is unlikely to turn the UK tide but does offer nationwide con-
sistency to a system that was largely dictated by individual local authorities. If
implemented, it will ensure all homes in England recycle the same materials.
There will be two bins: one for residual waste (‘black bins’) and one for six core
recyclates (paper, glass, plastic etc). The system will also apply to smaller busi-
nesses whose waste is similar to households.
Let’s be positive while we can: weekly collections of food waste will be intro-
duced across the country by 2026, replacing the current piecemeal approach.
Curiously, while the relevant Government department Defra says this will end
‘the threat of smelly waste waiting weeks for collection and cutting food waste
heading to landfill’, it claims this will stop a trend towards three- or four-weekly
bin collections. This is curious logic because weekly food collections are almost
always offered by councils with three- or four-week bin regimes and doubly curi-
ous because their recycling rates are typically significantly higher (and more
cost-effective) than those with more frequent regimes.
And if something can be triply curious, Mr Sunak’s intervention follows two
detailed and lengthy consultations by Defra with the recycling and waste man-
agement sector. One of those consulted said it felt like ‘valuable knowledge has
been ridden roughshod over’.
It’s a backward step not to collect paper and glass separately, especially when
UK households already understand this aspect of recycling. It’s co-mingling by
another name and all the best recycling countries ditched the practice a long
time ago. Greater contamination of recyclates feedstock will be inevitable.
Defra’s own figures indicate that contamination rates for paper and card in in
mixed collections is 15.5% and 12% respectively, compared to only 1.1% and 4%
for separate collection. It doesn’t make sense at any level.
Everything takes such a long time. I used to edit a magazine in the waste man-
agement sector. When I left in 2018, the industry was poised to set off on a stra-
tegic path towards a range of sustainable goals with a detailed timeline. But
most milestones have either been put back or disappeared altogether as differ-
ent ministers have come and gone.
With the new political landscape, we are likely to see even further delays.
COLUMN
R&D TEAM CLAIMS ‘ULTRA-FAST’
RECYCLING OF GLASS
FIBRE-REINFORCED PLASTIC
Researchers at Rice University in Texas,
USA have developed an energy-efficient
method to transform glass fibre-rein-
forced plastic (GFRP) into silicon carbide
(SiC).
The material is commonly used in the manu-
facture of large products such as semicon-
ductors, aircraft and wind turbine blades.
But recyclers struggle to recycle GFRP once
they are decommissioned.
‘We end up burying whole wing structures of
aircraft and air turbines blades in landfill,’
says Professor James Tour. ‘Disposing of
GFRP this way is just unsustainable. Until
now, there has been no good way to recycle
it.’
Tour believes his research team’s break-
through represents a solvent-free and ener-
gy-efficient flash upcycling method enabling
ultrafast conversion of this complex waste
stream. He cites high material recovery of
over 90%. The SiC powders obtained can be
used as the anode material for lithium-ion
batteries.
Using the new process, GFRP is ground into
a mixture of plastic and carbon. More car-
bon can be added to make the mixture con-
ductive. The researchers then apply high
voltage through two electrodes, with the
temperature reaching almost 3 000 Celsius.
As a next step, Rice University is looking to
take its experiments out of the laboratory
environment. Tour hopes interested parties
will reach out to help scale up the results.
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