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Economic and Environmental Justification
Published in Rupinder Singh, Ranvijay Kumar, Additive Manufacturing for Plastic Recycling, 2022
Ranvijay Kumar, Rupinder Singh
Prioritizing the regeneration of materials, processing, and products is the key aim of the circular economy. In case of plastic recycling, it deals with reusing plastics and plastic-based products by processing and reprocessing. The ultimate regeneration is to make the plastic materials or plastic-based products sustainable as per environmental as well as an economic basis.
Post-Consumer Plastics Recycling
Published in Robert E. Landreth, Paul A. Rebers, Municipal Solid Wastes, 2020
Mixed resin secondary recycling processes are becoming more numerous in the U.S. They are an especially popular form of recycling in Japan and Germany where landfilling is not an option. There are engineering and economic challenges in this type of plastic recycling. These include: maintaining dependable and consistent quality, limited markets, and low-valued products in relation to production cost. Greater variety and quantity of marketable products are needed in addition to reductions in processing costs. Buyers must learn to value the durability of these products and pay prices commensurate with their true value and production costs.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Recycled Polymer Composites
Published in R.A. Ilyas, S.M. Sapuan, Emin Bayraktar, Recycling of Plastics, Metals, and Their Composites, 2021
H.N. Salwa, S.M. Sapuan, M.T. Mastura, M.Y.M. Zuhri, R.A. Ilyas
Plastic waste recycling started in the early 1990s when the recycled plastics were used for structural and load-bearing applications and railway sleepers (Rajendran et al., 2013). Traditionally, plastic recycling is involved in the production of second-grade pellets of a single-type polymer. The markets for most of the recycled products produced are low-pressure pipes, traffic barriers, outdoor furniture, dustbins, etc. and are becoming competitive and new applications with higher “added-value” recycled plastics are becoming an interesting research topic (Scelsi et al., 2011; Sommerhuber et al., 2016; Tshifularo & Patnaik 2020; Zander et al., 2019). Plastic recycling operations generally consist of collection, separation and cleaning, followed by melt processing steps. However, complexity of the material system is significant, where materials may be composed of one or more recycled polymers, the reinforcements/fillers and other additives such as compatibilizers, stabilizers and impact modifiers (Scelsi et al., 2011). On the other hand, the challenges in attaining an eco-friendly status of recycled plastic-based products are because of the inconsistency of plastic wastes and the low performance of secondary materials. Utilization of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the product development processes helps to identify consumption of resources and environmental impacts associated directly or indirectly throughout the life cycle of the product. The LCA is defined as “a technique to compile and analyse the environmental impacts involved in all stages of the product’s life cycle from raw material extraction stage to the disposal stage.” This integration of LCA in the product development process will help to establish the relationship between the products (recycled) and their performance with the environmental impacts. LCA is also widely used to decide on a sustainable alternative in plastic waste management. Previous LCA studies showed that recycling resulted in lower emissions and provided benefits to the environment with the assumption that the performance of the recycled plastic materials are equivalent to those of the virgin materials (Rajendran et al., 2013).
Influence of processed waste bagasse fibre-stone dust-6063 aluminium alloy particle on the characteristics of hybrid reinforced recycled HDPE composites
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 2021
I. O. Oladele, A. S. Taiwo, T. A. Okegbemi, M. A. Adeyemi, S. O. Balogun
The increasing rate of production of plastics on a global scale is amazing since there is more plastic produced in the previous decade than during the entire twentieth century. This exponential growth in plastics production is due to what is known as the ‘plastics revolution’ whereby chemists are developing new methods to push the limits of polymers (Peplow 2016). However, new environmental regulations are beginning to target plastic products, such as micro-plastics (Carrington 2018). Kazemi-Najafi (2013) in his review reports that ‘waste plastics account for 11.2% of the annual 84.2 thousand tons of municipal waste stream generated in Tehran in 2006 and 12.4% out of 250 million tons in the USA in 2010’. This is also evident in most African countries and particularly Nigeria, with lots of waste plastics accounting for much of the pollution both on land and in the oceans (Adekomaya and Ojo 2016). To alleviate this problem, conventional domestic waste plastic recycling methods include only a few types of plastics like low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and polypropylene (PP) (AlmMa’adeed et al. 2018). Often, the recycled material needs to be processed in ways that reduce contamination (Scelsi et al. 2011). Thus, current recycling methods involve filtering for size and type, a comprehensive washing and separation operation, crushing, drying, and granulation to produce a recycled resin pellet product that can be utilised (AlmMa’adeed et al. 2018). However, the low economic value of waste plastic and the difficult filtering process causes low plastic recycling rates (Rajendran et al. 2012). Based on the consciousness of the detrimental effects of these waste plastics on the environment, developed and developing nations of the world began to research into ways and/or methods of recycling these waste plastics such that it could be returned into the economy with little or no extra cost, thus, limiting or reducing their negative impact on the environments.