WaPiC - Waste Plastics in Chemical recycling

塑料和塑料垃圾已成为我们社会的主要关注点。自从BBC的《蓝色星球》节目播出以来，公众、媒体、名人、政府、非政府组织和企业都把焦点转向了我们日常生活中使用的塑料会发生什么。尽管如此，英国塑料的回收水平总体上仍然很低，大部分被填埋或焚烧。对于某些类型的塑料，如软包装，这种材料很少被收集，分类和回收。与此同时，对再生塑料的需求也在不断增长，产品制造商积极寻找英国合适的再生塑料供应，以取代原始聚合物和昂贵的进口产品。Fiberight交付的WaPiC（化学品回收中的废塑料）项目将评估和展示塑料问题的解决方案。Fiberight将合并、分类和测试净化策略，以从混合废物中生产出所需的清洁塑料可回收流;帮助英国在净零目标范围内增加资源回收。尽管有必要增加塑料的机械回收，但这种途径存在局限性，因为：承购市场规模、回收物的最终用途应用范围狭窄、监管障碍，技术再制造的挑战和公众对某些产品中废物衍生材料的接受程度。因此，WaPiC将探索从混合-废物流作为化学品回收的适当投入，并作为机械回收工艺的补充技术。这一战略将能够从残余废物中回收和循环利用更大比例的塑料。价值链中的许多人认为，化学回收是克服机械回收相关挑战的一种方式。主要优势包括：能够生产相当于原始塑料的再生塑料，用于包括食品接触包装在内的各种最终用途;以及回收更广泛的塑料材料（软塑料和硬塑料），用于增值应用。

Plastics and plastic waste have become a major concern for our society. Since the BBC's Blue Planet programme, the public, media, celebrities, governments, NGOs and businesses have all turned the spotlight on to what happens to the plastics we all use in our daily lives. Despite these high levels of concern UK recycling levels for plastics remain low overall, with the majority being landfilled or incinerated. For some types of plastic, such as flexible packaging, very little of this material is collected, sorted and recycled. In parallel there is increasing demand for recycled plastics, with product manufacturers actively searching for UK supplies of suitable recycled plastics to replace virgin polymer and costly imports.The WaPiC (Waste Plastics in Chemical recycling) project, delivered by Fiberight, will assess and demonstrate a solution to the plastic problem. Fiberight will amalgamate, sort, and test purification strategies for producing in-demand clean plastic recyclable streams from mixed-waste; helping the UK to increase resource recovery within the net-zero ambition.Although a necessity exists to increase mechanical recycling of plastics, this pathway has limitations due to; off-take market size, narrow range of end-use applications for the recyclate, regulatory hurdles, technical re-manufacturing challenges and public acceptance of waste-derived materials in certain products.WaPiC will therefore explore the recovery of plastics from mixed-waste streams as a suitable input for chemical recycling and as a complementary technology to mechanical recycling processes. This strategy will enable the recovery and recycling of a larger portion of plastics from residual waste.Chemical recycling is being seen by many in the value-chain as a way of overcoming the challenges associated with mechanical recycling. Key benefits are: the ability to generate virgin-equivalent recycled plastics for use in a wide range of end-use applications including food contact packaging; and recycling of a wider range of plastic materials (flexible and rigid plastics), for value-added applications.