Dilemmas in sustainable packaging

Plastic Packaging is in the focus of attention. New legislation, extended producer responsibility programs as well as new voluntary commitments are being published every month. At the same time there is an overload of information and new initiatives that is daunting for a lot of producers, politicians and scientists. On top of that consumers get a lot of conflicting messages – emotion is defining the public opinion and the debate is lacking facts and figures. This leads to suboptimal solutions, unintended consequences and dilemmas in sustainable packaging.

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Advanced solvent-based technology for the closed-loop recycling of engineering plastics

Engineering plastics (e.g., ABS, PC and PMMA) have superior mechanical properties, such as strength and gloss. Therefore, they are primarily used in high-end products, such as electrical and electronic (E&E) devices and passenger cars. When it comes to end-of-life solutions, closed-loop recycling is often the only sustainable option for this group of plastics. This is mainly due to a lack of alternative product applications to absorb lower-grade recycled material in quantity. In turn, closed-loop recycling implies very high quality requirements on the recycled material to replace virgin resins.

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