“Demand for plastics in society is increasing: Plastic materials were long celebrated as technical achievements with no downsides, but now producers and processors must frequently justify themselves – for manufacturing the goods, for using them, and now more and more often for the question of their recyclability.
Driven by the rising demands worldwide for a circular plastics economy, a clear trend toward more recycling has taken shape in recent years. However, striving toward an increase in the proportion of recycled material in plastics production is not new.
The plastics industry has been blazing the trail toward a circular economy for a long time. As well it should; if for no other reason than to reduce the percentage of plastics in the global carbon footprint, recycling must be boosted while use of fossil resources must be reduced.
In order to realize this goal, companies are developing more and ever better recycling technologies. Even today, they are enabling the circular use of hard-to-recycle plastics and even plastic compounds. Chemical recycling will not replace material recovery but rather is expected to supplement it in a meaningful way.