PlasticsEurope Launches Industry Initiative to Drive Innovative Recycling Solutions for Polystyrene

• Pro-active industry collaboration to address circular economy
• Consumer waste to be turned into polystyrene ultimately for food-related uses

PlasticsEurope launched today an initiative to promote innovative recycling solutions for Polystyrene, in a push to support the European Union’s circular economy plan. The group aims to engage the value chain in the development and industrialization of promising new recycling technologies.

Focusing on chemical recycling, the PlasticsEurope initiative aims at converting collected post-consumer polystyrene waste into virgin polystyrene. New technologies will enable the incorporation of post-consumer waste into plastic manufacturers’ production processes. The target is to generate high-quality polystyrene to meet the most demanding standards, ultimately for food contact applications.

“These technologies, through an extensive collaboration along the value chain, will provide efficient and sustainable solutions to today’s environmental challenges”, said Norbert Niessner, Chairman of the Chemical Recycling Working Group after its kick-off meeting.

“The initiative paves the way to increasing the circularity of plastics. Finding new ways to recycle represents an increased opportunity to save valuable resources for future generations and avoid plastics ending up in landfills” said Karl-H. Foerster, Executive Director, PlasticsEurope. “New recycling technologies can further enhance the recovery of high value feedstock from consumer waste”, he explained.

The initiative is part of the activities announced by PlasticsEurope at the K2016 to maximize the fullest potential of plastics in delivering resource efficiency gains within the circular economy.

Press Contact

PlasticsEurope AISBL

Nuria Buezas

Communications and Media Manager

Phone: +32 (2) 675 1757

nuria.buezas@plasticseurope.org