Plastics recycling economics

Plastics processing, 19 536-563 extrusion, 19 539-549 molding, 19 549-556 thermoplastic resins, 19 536, 537-539 thermosetting resins, 19 556-559 Plastics recycling, 21 372, 446-461 economics of, 21 457-459 impurity separation in, 21 448 materials separation in, 21 447-448 recent developments in, 21 456-457 types of plastics in, 21 449-457 Plastics recycling industry, U.S., 21 458-459... 

Recycling is particularly important for the building civil engineering market, the sector with the second-largest consumption of thermoplastics. Unfortunately, plastics recycling presents technical and economic difficulties and is less advanced, industrially, than that of metals or glass. 

Just as there seem to be good opportunities for plastic recycling, there are many technical, marketing, and economical challenges as well. One of the major issues is the diversity in the composition, as the discarded products are made from a... 

J. R. Ellis, Polymer Recycling Economic realities in Plastics, Rubber and Paper Recycling ... 

The burgeoning demand for plastics in threshold countries such as China, India and parts of South America, however, is likely to be a far greater contribution to global plastics consumption within the near future. Thus, even though plastics are likely to contribute to reduced resource consumption in the same way as they do in other regions, the global waste generation of a material that in many cases is considered difficult, if not impossible, to recycle economically is likely to increase dramatically. 

Disassembly costs are largely ignored in product pricing. The incineration of plastics is stUl often the most economical solution. It makes little practical sense to consider plastics recycling within an isolated framework. 

There is also uncertainty in the regulatory status of tertiary recycling when it does not result in the direct production of monomers suitable for polymerization into new plastic. The European Commission has at times supported the chemical recycling (depolymerization) of condensation polymers such as polyethylene terephthalate back to monomer (e.g., dimethyl terephthalate) as recycling for the purpose of government-mandated plastics recycling rate calculations, but not the liquefaction of polyolefin plastics back to petrochemical feedstocks for reprocessing in a refinery. Discussions around these types of definitional issues, and their environmental and economic implications, are likely to continue for many years to come. 

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