Plastic has become a material that is as essential as it is problematic (it is expected that in the year 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea). Last week, both realities placed plastic waste at the center of the international political and economic agenda. At the same time that Paris was hosting a United Nations meeting to advance towards a global treaty against plastic pollution, advances in the chemical recycling of plastic were the focus of many of the conversations in Barcelona within the framework of the Equiplast fairs (International Plastics Meeting and Rubber) and Expoquimia (International Chemistry Meeting).
“We must try to make a more sustainable use of plastic, reducing its consumption and betting on its recycling”, indicates the person in charge of the waste and circular economy line of the waste, energy and environmental impact unit of Eurecat, Sandra Meca. The United Nations estimates that every year 400 million tons of plastic are produced in the world, of which only 9% is recycled. Technological advances in chemical recycling are raising great hopes in this regard. "Today, there is a lot of plastic waste that cannot be recycled, but that could be thanks to chemical recycling," explains Meca. Alicia Martín, general director of the Iberian region of Plastics Europe, points out another great advantage of this method: "The resulting material has the same quality as the virgin raw material used to manufacture plastics". With mechanical recycling, the majority today, plastic loses properties.
In the mechanical process, the residue is chopped to create new material, while with the chemical process, the residue is broken down to obtain the starting components. "Both methods are going to complement each other in the future, but time and investments are still needed for chemical recycling to be scalable," acknowledges the Plastics Europe directive. The sector also calls for "legislation to be able to distinguish which plastic is of virgin origin and which plastic comes from chemical recycling, because they are difficult to differentiate," adds Martín.
Plastics Europe polymer manufacturers have announced investments in chemical recycling of €2.6 billion by 2025 and €7.2 billion by 2030. As a result, it is estimated that the production of chemically recycled plastics will increase to 1.2 million tonnes in 2025 and 3.4 million tons in 2030. In Spain, projected investments will allow waste treatment capacities to multiply by 40 through chemical recycling, reaching almost half a million tons in 2025.” The reality, today, is that chemical recycling is very minor in Europe, representing less than 1%”, acknowledges Eva Verdejo, leading researcher on chemical recycling at the Aimplas Innovation and Technology Center.
Cristina González, director of innovation of the Business Federation of the Spanish Chemical Industry (Feique), highlights "the great potential of Spain to become a leader in chemical recycling". "There are already many entities that are working on it, with tangible results," says González. With 1.4 million tons of plastic processed in recycling plants in 2021, Spain is the second country in the European Union in recycling capacity, only surpassed by Germany. A study carried out by Equiplast confirms that the Spanish plastics industry generates a turnover of 27,766 million euros, a figure that represents 2.3% of the national GDP, giving direct employment to 125,208 people throughout Spain. Catalonia is the autonomous community with the largest number of companies, with 1,070.
