Recycled plastic: how to turn waste into treasure?

Recycled plastics refer to chemical raw materials that are recovered by physical or chemical methods such as pretreatment, melt granulation, and modification of waste recycled plastics.
It is the reuse of plastics.
Through resource recycling, it can also be used.
To achieve environmental protection and energy saving
.
And recycled plastics are as widely used as ordinary plastics, and downstream applications involve textiles, packaging, building materials, automobiles, medical care, electronics and other fields
.
Therefore, in recent years, in addition to various policies for degradable plastics, recycled plastics have also been encouraged and promoted by national policies
.

Recycle and reuse waste

In September 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "14th Five-Year Plan" Action Plan for Plastic Pollution Control.
One of the main tasks is to accelerate the standardized recycling and disposal of plastic waste, including strengthening the standardized recycling and disposal of plastic waste.
Clear and transport, establish and improve the rural plastic waste collection, transportation and disposal system, increase the recycling of plastic waste, and improve the level of harmless disposal of plastic waste
.
After that, in November 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for Industrial Green Development", which mentioned the implementation of plastic pollution control requirements, the implementation of industry norms for comprehensive utilization of waste plastics, and the encouragement of chemical recycling of waste plastics.
Promote the thermal cracking of low-value waste plastics
.

At present, China has formed a certain scale of recycled plastics industry clusters.
From the perspective of enterprise distribution, recycled plastics enterprises are mainly distributed in the southeast coastal areas and central China
.
Specifically, from the perspective of provinces and cities, Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangdong, Anhui, and Zhejiang ranked the top five in terms of the number of recycled plastics enterprises
.

The "China Recycled Plastic Industry Development Report 2020-2021" issued by the Recycled Plastics Branch of the China Materials Recycling Association pointed out that with China's economic development and the improvement of living consumption levels, the consumption of plastics continues to grow
.
In addition, with the changes in people's consumption patterns and the rapid development of emerging fields in recent years, as well as the large increase in the demand for disposable medical and protective equipment caused by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the use of disposable plastic products has also increased rapidly
.
In 2020, China's plastic consumption was 90.
877 million tons, an increase of 12.
2% over the previous year
.
In 2021, China will generate about approx.

62 million tons, of which landfill is about 15.
4 million tons, accounting for about 25%; the incineration volume is about 27.
6 million tons, accounting for about 44%, and the recycling volume is about 19 million tons, accounting for about 31%
.

Thanks to rising prices and increased recycling, the output value of China's waste plastic recycling will be about 105 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 33% from 2020 (79 billion yuan)
.
At the same time, domestic recycled plastic production is about 16.
5 million tons, an increase of about 2.
73 million tons or 19.
8% over 2020 (13.
77 million tons)
.
At present, recycled plastics have been widely used in textiles, automobiles, packaging, consumer electronics, agriculture, building materials, etc.
, and recycled general-purpose plastics are the most widely used in the fields of film and injection molding, accounting for 36% and 28% respectively
.
The application in the field of hollow and pipe materials accounts for 12%, and the application of recycled engineering plastics in textiles, automobiles, packaging, consumer electronics, etc.
continues to increase
.

Regarding the prospect of recycled plastics, Ji Junhui, a researcher at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the National Engineering Research Center for Engineering and Ecological Plastics, said that all plastic wastes that can be recycled should be recycled, including physical and chemical regeneration, which is not only for resources Making full use of it is also an important way to decarbonize the plastics industry
.
"Recycled plastics have received high attention in academia and policy, and the country has also deployed research projects to promote it, but the development of the actual industry is not very rapid
.
" Ji Junhui said that with the deepening of recycling and resource research, new Recycling technologies with good benefits will emerge, and the recycled plastics industry may develop rapidly
.

The recycled plastics industry has been quietly changing in recent years
.
In the past, companies entered the field of recycled plastics for the purpose of reducing production costs
.
With the increasingly strict environmental protection requirements in China, some companies have begun to enter this track for environmental protection requirements or out of their own responsibility and commitment to the environment
.
"The transformation of enterprises from simply using recycled plastics to investing in recycled plastics enterprises will only occur after 2020,
" said Wang Wang, executive vice president of the Plastics Recycling Branch of China Synthetic Resin Association
.

Dawn Group, a leading domestic plastic raw material enterprise, has recently made layouts in both degradable plastics and recycled plastics
.
Xu Gang, director of the marketing department of Dawn Group, told reporters that the biggest advantage of recycled plastics is that the price is relatively cheap, and corresponding products can be manufactured according to different needs, so that resources will not be lost
.
"Plastics are made from petroleum-refined products.
Dawn Group's planning of recycled plastics projects is based on 'reusable' considerations.
Recycling recycled plastics can effectively save oil resources
.
" Xu Gang said
.

Xu Gang introduced to reporters that in the past 10 years, various countries and regions represented by the European Union have further introduced more policies and regulations to restrict the use of non-degradable plastics through local bans and restrictions, and to guide the public to reduce the use of plastics.
product dependency
.
Most of these regulations are regulations prohibiting the use of single-use plastic products on the consumer side, and the more far-reaching ones are the regulations introduced by the European Union in 2020 that will impose a tax of 800 euros per ton on single-use plastic packaging in 2021 and the direct tax in 2021.
Regulations banning/restricting dozens of single-use plastics
.
The two regulations are aimed at the upper and lower reaches respectively, which are enough to shake the pattern of supply and demand in the industry
.

Recycling is difficult and economies of scale are difficult to achieve

Despite the entry of large companies such as Dawn and Jinfa, the recycled plastics industry has not made a qualitative leap
.
The overall development level of the industry is still low - although the market size has been expanding, the core of production capacity is still small and non-standard enterprises
.
According to Wang Wang, the overall scale of recycled plastics in China is relatively large, with an annual output of more than 30 million tons
.
However, there are only 500 or 600 standardized production enterprises, and the output of these standardized enterprises accounts for less than half of the output, and the rest are produced by non-standard small enterprises
.

"The biggest challenge facing recycled plastics is that the market is small, chaotic, and complex, and there is low-quality competition.
Dawn entered the recycling market also hopes to make recycled plastics into high-quality applications through its own efforts, and make some contributions to the progress of the industry
.
" Xu Gang said that the recycled plastics industry needs to be more widely recognized by the public.
With the continuous improvement of public awareness of environmental protection, the status of recycled plastics will continue to improve
.
Xu Gang also pointed out that the recycled plastics industry also urgently needs to develop a more complete industrial chain, from the waste recycling of wool to cleaning and processing to downstream reuse, it must be operated on a large scale to prevent "scattered and poor" and no quality assurance.
, enterprises with too small scale and unstable products appear
.

"No one will look at a factory that is so complicated and non-standard, and has to pay such high investment and operating costs
.
Everyone will think that the profitability is too poor, and the possibility of investment is very low
.
" Wang Wang said frankly that the current recycled plastics The industry is an industry with complex front-end processing, high cost of regeneration process, and low profit of finished products
.

In front-end processing, recycled plastics use waste plastics as raw materials.
However, due to the lack of an effective waste plastic recycling system, China's waste plastic recycling can only rely on manpower
.
"Scavengers pick up from various places little by little" is the most mainstream channel for recycling waste plastics
.
And this is really unimaginable in the context of Industry 4.
0
.

Regarding the problem of waste plastic recycling, many industry experts have called for attention
.
For example, during the two sessions this year, Feng Shouhua, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed that recycling is one of the important means to solve the problem of plastic pollution.
At present, the biggest problem is that the plastic recycling system is still not perfect, and the urban recycling infrastructure is generally imperfect.
, in particular the lack of sorting centers dedicated to serving recyclables
.
"

Wang Yonggang, secretary general of the Recycled Plastics Branch of the China Materials Recycling Association, also said that the construction of the sorting center is a key part of the front-end collection
.
Although China has garbage removal and transportation facilities for sanitation systems, it lacks dedicated collection facilities and networks for recyclables, including transfer stations, packing stations, and sorting centers for recyclables
.

The amount of waste plastic that can be recycled is also very limited
.
Wang Wang told reporters that the recycling of most waste plastics is very small, it is impossible to form a streamlined process, and it is difficult to achieve industrialized large-scale production
.
Among the waste plastics, only a few specific varieties such as PET and HDPE are expected to achieve industrial development, because these products are hard in texture, large in amount, easy to recycle, and widely used in downstream applications
.
In this reality, the cost of high-quality recycled plastics will be higher than the price of virgin materials, because the waste from which high-quality recycled plastics are produced is already scarce, resulting in high prices for high-quality recycled plastics
.

"Waste plastics are not produced, but 'abandoned'
.
The amount of waste plastics in each city is generally fixed
.
" Wang Wang explained to reporters by taking the bumper of a car as an example, "If a certain provincial capital city The volume of bumpers dismantled every day is 50 tons, so the largest factory in the city only needs to have a production capacity of 50 tons per day
.
Converted to a year, the production capacity is only a little more than 10,000 tons, and it needs to be distributed to many large and small.
It is very difficult to scale it in a processing plant
.
”

The collected waste plastics are sent to the processing plant, where the waste plastics are sorted and processed
.
This requires the front-end processing plant to have very strong sorting capabilities, and to have a series of sorting equipment such as electrostatic machines and color sorters, it is possible to form large-scale processing
.

"One of the biggest factors restricting the development of the recycled plastics industry is the issue of profitability
.
" Wang Wang pointed out that the recycling cost, reverse logistics cost, and manual picking cost of the recycled plastics industry are superimposed on each other, which is far greater than the value of the waste material itself
.
The behavior of enterprises is driven by the market economy, and the economy is lost, and the recycled plastics industry is struggling
.

Strengthen planning and expect more powerful policies

Wang Wang believes that China urgently needs to introduce an environmental economic policy
.
According to the requirements of the laws of the market economy, various economic means are used to regulate or influence the behaviors of market entities, "giving a certain value to a waste that may obviously affect the environment, so as to generate a recycling stream
.
" For example, "compulsory recycling" and "packaging" Environmental and economic policies such as the “minimum recycling ratio”, “proportional use of recycled plastics” and “deposit system”
.

Specifically, it is necessary to give the market corresponding responsibilities, such as mandatory recycling, deposit system and other means, requiring all packaging companies to achieve a certain target rate of recycling
.
At the same time, it is necessary to give waste plastics higher economic value
.
"A bottle of mineral water may only be three or four cents.
If you can give a waste plastic bag a value of one or two cents, more people will be willing to pick it up
.
" Wang Wang said that the amount of many waste plastics was originally large, but Because the economy is too low, no one is willing to collect
.

For example, paper-based composite packaging is a type of plastic that is very difficult to recycle
.
The most common paper-based composite packaging is the milk Tetra Pak sold on the market, which is a composite material of aluminum foil, paper and plastic.
It is generally believed that the recycling process is based on paper
.
However, in the actual investigation, it is found that for paper recycling, paper-based composite materials are regarded as "impurities"
.
"Unless they are secretly stuffed, they won't be needed at all
.
" Wang Wang believes that if these packages can be given a certain value through the "deposit system" and other methods, their recycling rate will definitely "improve by leaps and bounds"
.
"Originally, the front-end of the recycled plastic industry relies on some waste scavengers.
If there is no economic drive, it is even more impossible for anyone to do it
.
" Wang Wang concluded
.

The issue of improving the economy of the plastic recycling system is a general consensus in the industry
.
"The most effective way to establish a plastic recycling system is to establish a commercialized and profitable recycling model for recyclables
.
This recycling model can allow capital to flow into the recycling system through market means and expand according to market demand.
Recycling network, improve recycling rate and total recycling
.
" Wang Yonggang said
.

Feng Shouhua suggested that local governments should increase land use planning for recycling infrastructure such as sorting centers
.
At the same time, according to the local reality, consideration should be given to providing certain financial support or free land use policies for recycling enterprises to promote the construction of sorting centers in various places
.

It is understood that China's current policies for the recycled plastics industry are limited to discussions on "encouraging development" and tax reduction
.
Wang Wang believes that these drivers are not enough to get to the essence of the problem
.
He emphasized that through the deposit system, compulsory recycling and other means, companies must assume certain recycling responsibilities, in order to truly achieve leapfrog development of the recycled plastics industry
.
"The recycled plastics industry still has a long way to go from mature norms, or the ideal state of sustainable development
.
" Wang Wang said
.

Degradation and regeneration, sharing the responsibility of green development

Generally speaking, both degradable plastics and recycled plastics currently have some shortcomings and problems that need to be solved urgently
.
So in terms of the development of the green plastics industry, which of these two main directions is more likely to take on the responsibility?

When it comes to the relationship between degradable plastics and recycled plastics, Ji Junhui believes: "Recycled plastics and degradable plastics are two sides of the same coin, and only coordinated development can solve plastic pollution, so the two should not be competition, but appropriate division of labor
.
”

Ji Junhui said that both are important ways to solve plastic pollution
.
For plastic waste suitable for recycling, recycling should be guaranteed first
.
The renewable industry should focus on expanding the resource utilization of low-grade plastic waste.
At present, the recycling rate of plastic waste is about 35%.
In the future, new technologies for the utilization of plastic waste should be continuously developed.
etc.
technology
.

For some products that are scattered in use, the value of a single product is not high, but the cost of recycling and transportation is high, or even exceeds the cost of the product itself, such as plastic foam products, film bag products; part of the use process is polluted and cannot be recycled, such as medicine bottles of pesticides Bottles, etc.
; and products that cannot be recycled well by current recycling technology, such as paper-plastic composite products, aluminum-plastic composite products, etc.
, degradable plastics have unique economic and environmental advantages, and it is necessary to further expand the high-end applications of degradable plastics in these fields
.

"Under the background of 'double carbon', recycling and regenerating waste plastics by physical or chemical methods is the future development trend of the plastics industry
.
" Qu Yixin said
.
However, due to irreplaceability, recycling costs and other reasons, recycled plastics, degradable plastics and traditional non-degradable plastics will coexist for a long period of time
.

"Both types of plastics can take on the responsibility of controlling plastic pollution
.
" Xu Gang said that the effect of degradable plastics will be faster, and the effect of recycled plastics will go through a process
.
It is understood that Dawn Group currently has layouts in both degradable plastics and recycled plastics
.
In terms of degradable plastics, Dawn Group PBAT currently plans to produce 60,000 tons per year in the first phase and 60,000 tons per year in the second phase.
At the same time, it is also planning other degradable plastic projects, such as PLA and PGA
.
In terms of recycled plastics, Dawn Group is starting to build an industrial chain from upstream recycling and dismantling to cleaning and granulation to product processing; products cover PP, ABS, PS, PET, PA and other categories
.
"We believe that the future development of the plastics industry will be in the direction of low carbon and environmental protection, and in the direction of recyclable and completely degradable plastic products
.
" Xu Gang said
.

"With the rise of the global sustainable development wave and the domestic 'double carbon' goal, the green plastics industry will usher in a broader market space
.
" said Pang Guanglian, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Deputy Secretary-General of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation
.