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T.o jump start The market for recycled plastics is tiny, and governments around the world are encouraging companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the UK introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging that uses less than 30% recycled plastic. In 2024, New Jersey will begin enforcing similar rules, but with a lower target. California now requires that 15% of his beverage containers be made from recycled materials, and Washington plans to enact a similar requirement later this year. The European Commission, Canada and Mexico are all considering similar moves.
Most plastic products today are derived from newly extracted fossil fuels such as crude oil and natural gas. Incorporating some recycled plastic could reduce emissions and pollute waterways and landfills, experts say. However, collecting, sorting, crushing and dissolving used plastic for reuse is expensive. The new law could help recyclers find buyers for their waste.
But regulators may need better ways to make sure the new laws are working. However, most certification bodies take a bird’s eye view and track materials in different products and factories. As a result, items labeled “Recycled Content” may not contain 100% recycled content.
This current approach, called mass balance, poses additional challenges for those trying to verify recycled content. For mass balance to work well, it requires reliable and accurate data that is not always available across complex supply chains. Experts warn that material balances can overestimate recycled content.
British researchers have developed a new method to measure this recycled content by adding fluorescent dyes to recycled plastics during the early stages of manufacturing. By measuring color change, the team can determine the amount of recycled content in each individual plastic product.Through non-profit ReCon2the team is running pilot tests in real-world conditions, and says the approach helps prevent fraud, keep costs low, and improve consumer confidence.
In 2019, the world produced approximately 350 million tons of plastic. This has doubled production in the last 20 years. Only 6% of the world’s plastic produced is recycled plastic, and most is shoveled into landfills, incinerated or carried into ecosystems. Many researchers suggest that recycling alone is not enough to solve the problem of plastic pollution. Instead, the problem also requires some reduction and reuse. Nevertheless, scientists say these new laws and technologies that focus on this last option could reduce the environmental harm of plastic production.
Katrina Knauer, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said it was “essential” to be able to rationally track materials through this recycling market. “If we really want to have a circular economy, efficient and quantifiable tracking will be the only way to make it happen and create trust in the system,” she said.
C.companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been advocating for using recycled materials in their products for years. is as flexible as the term, Knauer said. Currently, to earn that badge, you have to tick a few boxes determined by federal agencies in the US and the European Commission in the EU. Recycled content has not undergone the same kind of regulatory scrutiny.
As the recycling industry develops, “I think we will face the same challenges that companies making less true claims have faced in the past,” said Knauer, who is also Bio’s chief technology officer. . -Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and Environment is a Department of Energy organization that helps companies adopt greener plastic technologies.
Many companies now use mass balance. It takes into account all the inputs used in manufacturing the product and balances them with the outputs to calculate the amount of recycled material.
