Recovery is the path to circularity – USA
Posted on January 17, 2025 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingToday, sustainability is defined as circularity, the ability to make a product and, at the end of its life, convert the material elements into the same product. Closing the loop lessens the need for more virgin materials, reduces emissions and instills the value of resource recovery.
Source: Recovery is the path to circularity | Plastics News
Mechanical recycling has its limits despite the advances in quality and scale. Advanced molecular recycling is an emerging option to recover the value of hard-to-recycle materials, improve recycling rates and strive toward full circularity. But critics have assailed advanced molecular recycling in its many iterations, because 100 percent of the offtake applications are not circular or because the yield of the process is “too low” or “only suitable for fuels. Purists maintain that EPR schemes direct funds to solely to 100 percent circular systems and regulators fall for NGOs’ classification of advanced recycling as “incineration” and to be shunned. Should we then toss technologies aside that recover the value of materials at the end of life that are not circular yet? Should we, for example, not build plants to convert waste plastics and tires to hydrogen for conversion to fuel cells or electricity, or aviation and marine bunker fuel because they are not 100 percent circular even though the transition to more sustainable methods to power transportation could be decades away from wholesale adoption?
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