Plastic waste that cannot yet be recycled for technical or economic reasons will reportedly be processed for chemical recycling. According to system operator DSD and plant operator EEW, they have agreed to establish a joint venture for this purpose and announced that they will develop a process by the end of this year to process up to 200,000 tons of plastic waste annually in a jointly built and operated plant. Input materials are to be sourced from DSD and EEW waste streams. "With this joint venture, we are creating a convincing solution for plastic waste for which recycling is still out of the question today," commented Michael Wiener (photo), CEO of Der Grüne Punkt. According to Bernard M. Kemper, CEO of EEW GmbH, their cooperation is the first time companies in the field of material and energy recycling have joined forces "to strengthen chemical recycling and thus further close the raw material cycle." From the waste streams of mixed plastics and sorting residues, the two companies want to obtain a raw material as a starting point for new products. According to EEW, plastic waste contained in household waste is to be sorted out for chemical recycling in their plants, which a service provider is then to chemically recycle through the process known as oiling, for example by means of pyrolysis. The pyrolysis oil obtained were marketed as a base material for the production of food-grade plastics for the manufacture of packaging. According to DSD and EEW, packaging manufacturers could thus access a raw material that would be demonstrably obtained from post-consumer waste.

Sources:

• recyclingmagazin.de (15.7.2021)
• euwid-recycling.de (15.7.2021)
• Photo: © DSD