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Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector
Plastics are increasingly a preferred material choice in designing and developing complex, consumer products, such as automobiles, because they are mouldable, lightweight, and are often perceived to be highly recyclable materials. However, actually recycling the heterogeneous plastics used in such d...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5456202/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28788167 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma7085883 |
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author | Miller, Lindsay Soulliere, Katie Sawyer-Beaulieu, Susan Tseng, Simon Tam, Edwin |
author_facet | Miller, Lindsay Soulliere, Katie Sawyer-Beaulieu, Susan Tseng, Simon Tam, Edwin |
author_sort | Miller, Lindsay |
collection | PubMed |
description | Plastics are increasingly a preferred material choice in designing and developing complex, consumer products, such as automobiles, because they are mouldable, lightweight, and are often perceived to be highly recyclable materials. However, actually recycling the heterogeneous plastics used in such durable items is challenging, and presents very different scenarios to how simple products, such as water bottles, are recovered via curbside or container recycling initiatives. While the technology exists to recycle plastics, their feasibility to do so from high level consumer or industrial applications is bounded by technological and economical restraints. Obstacles include the lack of market for recyclates, and the lack of cost efficient recovery infrastructures or processes. Furthermore, there is a knowledge gap between manufacturers, consumers, and end-of-life facility operators. For these reasons, end-of-life plastics are more likely to end up down-cycled, or as shredder residue and then landfilled. This paper reviews these challenges and several alternatives to recycling plastics in order to broaden the mindset surrounding plastics recycling to improve their sustainability. The paper focuses on the automotive sector for examples, but discussion can be applied to a wide range of plastic components from similarly complex products. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5456202 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54562022017-07-28 Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector Miller, Lindsay Soulliere, Katie Sawyer-Beaulieu, Susan Tseng, Simon Tam, Edwin Materials (Basel) Review Plastics are increasingly a preferred material choice in designing and developing complex, consumer products, such as automobiles, because they are mouldable, lightweight, and are often perceived to be highly recyclable materials. However, actually recycling the heterogeneous plastics used in such durable items is challenging, and presents very different scenarios to how simple products, such as water bottles, are recovered via curbside or container recycling initiatives. While the technology exists to recycle plastics, their feasibility to do so from high level consumer or industrial applications is bounded by technological and economical restraints. Obstacles include the lack of market for recyclates, and the lack of cost efficient recovery infrastructures or processes. Furthermore, there is a knowledge gap between manufacturers, consumers, and end-of-life facility operators. For these reasons, end-of-life plastics are more likely to end up down-cycled, or as shredder residue and then landfilled. This paper reviews these challenges and several alternatives to recycling plastics in order to broaden the mindset surrounding plastics recycling to improve their sustainability. The paper focuses on the automotive sector for examples, but discussion can be applied to a wide range of plastic components from similarly complex products. MDPI 2014-08-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5456202/ /pubmed/28788167 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma7085883 Text en © 2014 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Miller, Lindsay Soulliere, Katie Sawyer-Beaulieu, Susan Tseng, Simon Tam, Edwin Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector |
title | Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector |
title_full | Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector |
title_fullStr | Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector |
title_full_unstemmed | Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector |
title_short | Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector |
title_sort | challenges and alternatives to plastics recycling in the automotive sector |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5456202/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28788167 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma7085883 |
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