Sep. 11, 2021
Chemical recycling is nowadays very popular in the recycling of plastics.
Compared with mechanical recycling, one of the important advantages of chemical recycling is that it can achieve the quality of the original polymer, higher plastic recycling rate.
Decathlon has been facing the problem of a large number of plastic hangers falling into disuse. So recently found a domestic professional company to assist in recycling. In order to ensure the quality and durability of recycled materials, the type of recycled plastic should be single enough. But Decathlon uses 3 or 4 kinds of hangers, including different plastic materials or mixed with other additives, so how to sort and reuse has become the biggest difficulty. For those who use recycled plastic made of blocks, researchers through a special composite technology will be recycled PET and "reinforcing additives" combined with each other, so that it has sufficient hardness and high durability. On average, a liter of PET plastic bottle can make ten pieces of 2X4 size Lego blocks.
Recently, Google proposed to improve its hardware packaging game and ensure that by 2025 all "Made by Google" hardware are plastic-free and recyclable packaging.
Google's hardware division had this to say: "By 2025, we're committed to making our product packaging 100% plastic-free and 100% recyclable. We've already reduced the amount of plastic in our packaging since 2016, but we still have a lot of hard work to do to reach this new goal. In order for us to get there, we need to discover alternative recyclable materials that can still protect our products. It will take partnerships with our suppliers, tinkering in the lab and sharing experiences across the industry, but we will get there."
The commitment sets out various sustainability goals that Samsung hopes to achieve by 2025. According to the timeline, in addition to abandoning plastic packaging, Samsung also plans to include recyclable materials in all new smartphone products, achieve zero landfill waste and reduce standby power consumption of smartphone chargers to less than 0.005W when fully charged.
In recent months, Samsung has also introduced other sustainability measures, including launching an upcycling program for older Galaxy devices, a new tool to help people dispose of the energy they use, and committing to using only renewable energy for its Brazil and Mexico operations by 2025.
In June, Carbios, L'Oréal, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Suntory announced that they had successfully produced the world's first food-grade PET plastic bottles made from waste plastic using Carbios' enzyme PET recycling technology.
This is a world first," said Jean-Claude Lumaret, CEO of Carbios, "to use Carbios' patented enzymes to break down colored PET plastic and create food-grade clear PET bottles that perform exactly like PET made by traditional methods. This is a truly transformative innovation that could ultimately lead to a global supply cycle of PET plastics that never become waste products."
The enzyme, which was discovered from leaves composted in the fall, produces a hydrolytic enzyme that breaks down the leaf membranes, which the researchers modified to eventually obtain a highly efficient PET hydrolase. At 72°C, the enzyme was able to break down nearly 90 percent of a ton of used plastic bottles in 10 hours.
