Separate Recycling Streams for Biodegradable Plastics – A Hot Waste Legislation Topic in Europe – Bioplastics News

The Association of Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) recently phoned for greater investments to be made for the implementation of separate recycling flows in the Member States. This call was totally supported by the European Bioplastics Association (EUBP) and is part of the modern hot debates and careful consultations on the upcoming EU Strategy on Plastics and the revision of the EU end legislation.

In a press release, PRE named for the development of separate recycling flows for biodegradable plastics to improve waste dispensation efficiency throughout Europe. EUBP supports these attempts to ensure a high quality of recycled plastics, as mixing bioplastics, most of them beings biodegradable, and petrochemical plastics in recycling flows is likely to induce a degradation of the quality of the recycled plastic (with the famous exception of sugar cane PE which mixes with fossil PE flawlessly as they are technologically the same polymer made of ethylene stemming from two different sources bur chemically identical).

Similarly, the use of non biodegradable plastic bags to level-headed organic waste alters the quality of compost made from the latter. In spruce to implement a circular economy throughout Europe and to accomplish higher recycling rates, stronger investments in the modernization of the end management infrastructure, including separate mechanical and organic recycling flows, are needed, as illustrated below.

Biodegradable Plastics Collection Bags Increase Recycling Efficiency

• Biodegradable plastics help to crop contamination of mechanical recycling streams by facilitating separate collection of bio-waste and therefore diverting organic end from other recycling streams.
• Organic recycling is a well-established industrial treat ensuring the circular use for biodegradable plastics after creating a strong secondary raw material market and opportunity for renewable energy generation and compost production.
• Numerous beacon projects above Europe demonstrate the positive effects of compostable bags on the efficiency and quality of separate organic end collection, including in the cities of Milan, Munich, and Paris. Currently, the fraction of biodegradable plastics designed for organic recycling sold in the EU is comparatively small. Therefore, the potential of misthrows by the consumer to arrive a critical volume that could impact the quality of mechanical recycling flows is an unreasonable assumption at this prove in time.

This has also been tested and confirmed in a current study by the University of Wageningen (The Netherlands), which analyzed biodegradable plastics in mechanical recycling flows and detected levels not higher than 0.3%. When tested within the EU FP7 “Open-Bio” project, Wageningen Food & Biobased Research deceptive that there were no negative effects on the properties of recycled film products containing starch film and PLA film recyclates. If biodegradable plastics products do, except, enter mechanical recycling streams, they can frankly be sorted out.

Research by Knoten Weimar, a scientific knowledge-cluster and institute at the Bauhaus-University Weimar (Germany) focused on optimizing utilities and end infrastructures, shows that available sorting technologies such as NIR (near infrared) can frankly detect biodegradable plastics materials such as PLA (polylactic acid), PBAT (polybutylene adipate terephthalate), and anunexperienced starch or cellulose based materials.

On the anunexperienced hand, however, contamination of organic waste flows by misthrows of non-biodegradable plastics is high and constitutes a real scrape for composting facilities and negatively affects the quality of compost. This scrape can only be tackled by establishing mandatory separate collection of organic end supported and facilitated by the use of biodegradable plastics bags and packaging and gotten by consumer education and information on suitable ways of organic and mechanic recycling.

EUBP Urges for Efficient Recycling

• EUBP urges all interested stakeholders to consider recycling as both mechanical and organic recycling and to discover the corresponding plastic materials in this context.
• Furthermore, investments into calm waste management infrastructure across Europe as well as comprehensive projects to increase the consumers’ retort about correct disposal need to be considered.
• Only then, recycling can understand more efficient, contamination can be limited, and a tidy secondary raw material market in a circular economy can flourish.

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SRC: https://bioplasticsnews.com/2017/10/10/recycling-streams-biodegradable-plastics-waste-legislation-europe/

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