Identification of business opportunities in the value chain of plastic waste from post-consumer sources through recycling Cristiano Ribeiro de Santi, Carlos Alberto Correa

Abstract

The recycling of post-consumer plastic from urban solid waste presents numerous challenges and an increasingly growing number of medium and small companies that seek the revaluation of this waste as a profitable form of pro-environmental entrepreneurship. However, only a small fraction of urban plastic waste is recovered and a large volume, mainly from disposable packaging, is sent to landfills or simply discarded into the environment. The biggest challenge is related to the recovery of contaminated plastic waste, which requires investment in special recovery techniques, mainly the elimination of odors due to contamination by organic waste. In addition to conventional recycling techniques, this article presents some results of research carried out in a small company in the plastic materials recycling sector, focusing on the recovery of contaminated and more complex waste in which satisfactory technological innovations were achieved on a laboratory scale in continuous separation processes for plastics based on density differences and also chemical treatments to eliminate odors in recycled grains. However, the costs associated with such innovations made their application on an industrial scale difficult. Finally, some economic and technological challenges in this business sector are presented.