Holli Alexander of Eastman Chemical said collection unknowns are part of the current chemical recycling landscape. | Plastics Recycling Conference / Brian Adams Photography
Last year, e-scrap processor RecycleForce announced it would send e-plastics to Brightmark Energy for conversion into fuel, oil and wax products. Brightmark was one of several companies that participated in a recent workshop about technologies broadly known as “chemical recycling.”
Courtesy of Ad Rem.
A processing line now operational in the U.K. recycles plastics from refrigerators by modifying the density of water and leveraging electrostatic separation.
Printed circuit boards are made of roughly 30% metal and 70% nonmetals. | Sebastian_Photography/Shutterstock
Scientists who set their sights on potentially hazardous chemicals in scrap electronics say they can effectively break down the flame retardants in shredded circuit boards.
In April, the Chinese government will enact new requirements for pellet imports. | Piyathep/Shutterstock
Officials in Beijing are set to enact new requirements around the purity of recycled plastic pellets imported into China, which could disrupt international markets for U.S. e-plastics.
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The development of a new domestic e-plastics outlet comes at a time of market turbulence for the low-value materials. | KPixMining/Shutterstock
An Indiana plastics processing operation will consume roughly 40 million pounds of plastic from e-scrap and other products annually. Brightmark Energy plans to start up the facility in mid-2020.
U.S. e-scrap processors and brokers say they’re currently able to move e-plastics. | Alexey Lesik/Shutterstock
Asia remains the destination for many plastics recovered from electronics. But as buyers relocate from China to other countries, prices are down and quality and volume are increasingly critical factors.
E-plastics have been heavily impacted by market shifts in the past two years. | myibean/Shutterstock
A European effort is calling on consumers to push manufacturers into using recycled plastic in new electronics as a way to build end markets for the challenging material.
MBA Polymers plans to start processing e-scrap devices at the new facility in 2020. | PIYAWAT WONGOPASS/Shutterstock
Global plastics recycling company MBA Polymers will open a facility in Germany to recover e-plastics from electronics and appliances.
India was the second largest importer of U.S. scrap plastic during the first six months of 2019. | Avigator Fortuner/Shutterstock
Recovered plastic, including material from end-of-life electronics, has largely stopped flowing from the U.S. into India, which until recently has been among the top importers of scrap plastics.
Regulatory changes could prevent the U.S. from exporting e-plastics to a number of countries. | rawf8/Shutterstock
Federal regulators are asking countries that are major buyers of U.S. scrap plastic to refrain from implementing new trade restrictions laid out in the Basel Convention, a treaty covering global scrap material shipments.