Complex Consumer Products, their Impacts on End-of-Life Waste Management, and Extended Producer Responsibility

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In 2009, the Canadian Council for Ministers of the Environment (CCME) put forth a Canada wide action plan for extended producer responsibility (EPR) in which the producer’s responsibility extends to the post-consumer phase of a product (CCME 2009). Most current EPR programs, however, currently target packaging, print materials, containers, liquids, and other simple products. Even for complex, durable products, such as automobiles, only basic items, such as tires, fluids, and batteries are identified under current EPR initiatives. As a result, much of our waste, especially if coming from complex, durable consumer products, is still being landfilled. More critically, as a sub-category of our overall waste stream, plastic-based products pose one of the greatest challenges to industrial and institutional waste management systems. In Canada in 2008, 324,731 tonnes of plastics were diverted from disposal, but 2.8 million tonnes in comparison were disposed, and plastics have been reported to contribute to human health and environmental impacts. Effective end-of-life (EoL) management (reduction, reuse, recycling) of plastic goods can not only remove significant amounts of plastics from waste streams, it also produces economic value by returning an otherwise disposed material for reprocessing. But plastics recovery and their recovery methods are typically viewed in "curbside" pickup terms for simple items, such as water bottles or simple packaging shells. For example, the US EPA reports that in 2010, 31M tons of plastic were generated, but only 8% of the total plastics were actually recovered for recycling. Furthermore, almost 11 million tons of plastic was generated as durable goods in the US, such as appliances. Compared to simple goods, complex, durable goods pose significant challenges for recovery. Distinct materials are bonded to each other in more complex configurations, making separation for recovery technologically challenging and expensive. Some of the greatest contributors to plastics waste are waste electronics and end-of-life vehicles (ELVs): the US EPA estimates that only 25% of all discarded electronics in 2009 were even collected for recycling. Lastly, even relatively simple plastic products can be difficult to recover in specialized situations, such as medical waste. Thus, what is potentially recyclable is not always recovered. We propose that alternate pretreatment techniques, separation strategies, and management strategies that use incremental, multi-step approaches can significantly improve plastics recovery. The proposed research will: 1) identify and develop effective approaches to recovering plastics from complex, durable goods; 2) assess how effective waste handling techniques and approaches can complement and promote effective EPR programs; and 3) examine how the outcomes can be applied to new materials, such as carbon fibre, to avoid or at least mitigate future waste handling effects as experienced currently with plastic wastes. To undertake this research, a representative, complex item, such as an automotive car seat will be used as a test item which embodies multiple materials (foams, plastics, metal, fibre) but is often not typically recovered for materials recovery will be used. Furthermore, this research also provides valuable training in research techniques, engineering systems, and management and communication aspects related to waste recovery for multiple highly qualified personnel (HQP) ranging from PhD candidates to undegraduate students in engineering.