Understanding Plastics Recycling

This book shows the true and often-underestimated market potential of plastics recycling, with analysis from economic, ecological, and technical perspectives. It is aimed at both technical and non-technical readers, including decision makers in material suppliers, plastic product manufacturers, governmental agencies, educators, and anyone with a general interest in plastics recycling. An overview of waste handling systems with a focus on the U.S. market is provided. Different methods of waste handling are compared from both economic and ecological perspectives. Since plastic waste recycling is essential from an ecological point of view, common strategies and new approaches to both increase the recycling rate and improve recycling economically and technically are presented. This includes processing and material properties of recycled plastics. Finally, a worldwide outlook of plastic recycling is provided with analysis of additional worldwide markets, encompassing highly developed, fast-developing, and less developed countries. This extensively revised and expanded 3rd edition includes an overview of new recycling methodologies, as well as the influence of digitalization. It contains new chapters providing, respectively, characterization methods for plastic waste, and policy overview and its influence on the economics of recycling. Economic and environmental analysis are more general, comparing the economic benefits of the different recycling methods based on, e.g., volume, contamination, etc. Finally, extension of the global recycling chains is discussed. The spreadsheets used in the economic analyses are also provided as a bonus for the reader.