Map4Plastics

Background

Flanders has a lot of knowledge on designing, developing, and producing plastics and is at the forefront of plastics recycling. Yet, recycling rates are stagnating, and large streams of end-of-life (EoL) plastics remain unrecycled in the region, particularly beyond packaging. Map4Plastics focuses on those unrecycled plastics by collecting and centralizing available knowledge and data on these materials and their applications through literature reviews, database analyses, and stakeholder interviews. 

Goals

The goals of the project are to map quantitative information, identify the remaining gaps, and suggest potential solutions, thereby reducing the barriers for industry to create feasible ‘circular routes’. The consortium will apply this to four case studies, being (1) specialty polymers, (2) medical polymers, and (3) lost polyolefins. The 4^th case study will be selected based on a workshop with the user committee. 

Eventually, Map4Plastics aims to provide insights to current companies in plastics recycling. Additionally, the project will support given companies considering future investments but have not yet decided due to a limited view on the availability of suitable feedstock. Map4Plastics aims to give such companies a clearer understanding of unrecycled waste streams, required investments, and systematic hurdles (that can include impurities/logistic challenges/required scale/difficulties with varying feedstock/etc.), and ways to solve them (including new technologies, adaptations to plants, strategic partnerships, new business models, new product designs, etc.), thereby facilitating collaborative follow-up projects between industry stakeholders and knowledge institutes and accelerating the introduction of novel routes to plastic circularity.

Approach

Map4Plastics will primarily focus on Flanders but will also include data from the Walloon region, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the UK. The consortium will start from the applications in which the polymers are used and track them until their waste generation. This includes the quantification of where and why these plastic losses occur, and the identification of the best available (innovative) recycling technologies for the considered waste streams. Furthermore, Map4Plastics will assess alternative circular routes such as reuse and refurbishment or, in a broader sense, design for circularity. The recycling technologies’ potential for each case study will be assessed based on yields, technological readiness levels (TRLs), expected recyclate quality, required scale and investments (based on techno-economic assessment (TEA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) considerations), logistic aspects, required stakeholders and their attitudes, and current or future legislation. 

Information will be gathered based on literature, databases, and stakeholder consultations, combined with lab data when needed (e.g., targeted characterization campaigns). Data covers also potential routes to circularity (e.g., new recycling technologies or business models applied in literature/patents/industry). Based on the gathered information, Map4Plastics will apply a multi-factor analysis to identify the main bottlenecks towards circularity. The results will allow the project to pinpoint the opportunities to introduce new technologies or business models that would increase circularity rates in Flanders. Therefore, the dissemination of the accumulated knowledge is directed to the Flemish industries, represented by the spearhead clusters Catalisti, Medvia, and VIL, delivered through (scientific and whitepaper) publications, thematic workshops, and MOOC modules.