Click here to watch the webinar back; you can download the sheets of the presentations via the 'Documents' button

From packaging materials to very high-end constructions,plastics are in everything and can no longer be imagined out of our society. All this plastic leads to a huge plastic waste problem worldwide. Partly due to stricter laws and regulations and increasing demand for recycled materials, a lot of plastic is already being recycled. Mechanical recycling is used for this purpose.

But mechanical recycling is limited partly because the quality of the recycled plastic is lower in a highly mixed stream. Physical-chemical recycling, on the other hand, makes it possible to recycle plastics that cannot be recycled today. This allows recycling rates to increase substantially without having to settle for a lower quality product.

In 2021, the European Patent Office even published a study showing how Europe and the United States are the forerunners in terms of innovation in the plastics recycling industry. But where do we stand now? Can chemical recycling really make a difference? And what are the bottlenecks?

The Dutch Association of Process Technologists (NPT) organised a webinar on 30 March where three experts discussed the challenges and opportunities around plastics recycling from technical and non-technical perspectives.

The speakers were:

- Jean-Paul Lange: Sr. Principal Research Scientist at Shell & Professor in Chemical Biorefinery at the University of Twente(from 4 minutes and 30 seconds in the video)

- Vincent Toepoel: Director and co-owner of Waste4Me(from 33 min and 21 sec in the video)

- Jan Noordegraaf: Managing director of Innograaf BV (from 1 hr, 3 min and 56 sec in the video)

The presentations were followed by a panel discussion led by chairman of the day Yannick Severin of NPT.

Warm regards,

The board of KIVI Dutch Process Technologists

Documents