SPRITE - Sustainable Plastics Recycling Innovation by Tagging Electronically

世界经济论坛称，塑料包装垃圾是800亿美元的全球机遇。只有14%的塑料包装被送到回收工厂，只有9%被回收，而40%最终被填埋。英国的清洁增长战略的目标是减少垃圾填埋场的排放，到2050年实现零可避免废物。减少垃圾填埋场排放的一种方法是阻止本可避免的废物进入垃圾填埋场。这将通过一系列行动的组合来实现，这些行动通常分为减少(移除不必要的包装)和再利用(可再填充方案和回收)类别。在新冠肺炎大流行期间，所有这些方面的进展都遭遇了重大挫折。虽然有理由把重点放在减少塑料消耗量上，但由于塑料的许多好处，包括它的轻量化(相关的低运输成本和碳足迹)和坚固耐用，消除所有塑料是不切实际的。因此，必须提高回收利用率和质量，以便保留最高的材料价值以供再利用。大多数改善回收的方法都着眼于使分类/识别系统更智能，例如使用红外线识别塑料类型。相对较少的活动被用于使包装更智能，以便更容易地识别、分类、分离、再加工和再利用。我们的项目专注于通过在每个包装上提供机器可读的唯一数字标识来简化和增加塑料的回收。这一新功能提供了一个技术平台，可以实现各种不同的创新和应用。一种新兴的方法是鼓励消费者使用所谓的反向自动售货机(RVM)回收塑料。每个塑料瓶都有一笔押金，当消费者将塑料瓶退回其中一个RVM时，他们可以赎回押金，然后兑换成以后购买的东西。在欧洲，它们已经在德国广泛推广，现在只有3%的塑料瓶没有退货。虽然这些方法已经被证明是成功的，但当前RVM的一些局限性是：-视线到检测-低吞吐量-缺乏唯一的身份限制信息，并且容易受到欺诈-在该项目中，集成的分离/分类是困难和昂贵的。我们将调查使用务实的超低成本RFID技术来推动回收方面的改进，特别是展示押金退还计划的潜在使用案例，如反向自动售货机。

Plastic packaging waste is a \>$80Bn global opportunity according to the World Economic Forum. Only 14% of plastic packaging reaches recycling plants and only 9% is actually being recycled, whilst 40% ends up in landfill. The UK's Clean Growth Strategy has a goal to reduce emissions from landfill and achieve zero avoidable waste by 2050\. One way to reduce emissions from landfill is to stop the avoidable waste from reaching it. This will be achieved by a combination of actions generally grouped into reduce (removing unnecessary packaging) and re-use (refillable schemes and recycling) categories. Progress on all these has seen a significant setback during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst there is rightly focus on reducing the amount of plastic that is consumed it is not practical to eliminate all plastic due to its many benefits including it being lightweight (with associated low transport costs and carbon footprint) and its robustness. It is, therefore, essential to increase recycling rates and quality so that the highest material value is retained for reuse. Most approaches to improving recycling have looked to make the sorting/identification systems smarter, for example using infra-red to identify types of plastics. Relatively little activity has been directed towards making the packaging smarter so that it is easier to identify, sort, separate, reprocess and reuse. Our project focuses on simplifying and increasing recycling of plastics by providing a machine readable unique digital identity onto each pack. This new capability provides a technology platform that can enable a wide-range of different innovations and applications. An emerging approach is to incentivise consumers to recycle plastics using so-called reverse-vending machines (RVMs). Each plastic bottle has a deposit which can be redeemed by consumers when they return their plastic bottles into one of the RVMs, and then exchanged against future purchases. Within Europe these have been rolled-out widely across Germany where now only 3% of plastic bottles are not returned. Although these are already proving successful, some limitations of current RVMs are: - line-of-sight to detection - low throughput - lack of unique identity limits information and is open to fraud - integrated separation/sorting is difficult and expensive Within the project we will investigate the use of PragmatIC's ultra low-cost RFID technology to drive improvements within recycling, specifically demonstrating potential use-cases for deposit-return schemes such as reverse-vending machines.