Current Topics in Plastic Recycling

This chapter presents an overview of current trends in plastic recycling and focuses on specific topics of interest. Firstly, there are presented all methods used for plastic recycling, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Extra attention is paid to chemical recycling and especially, pyrolysis (thermal and catalytic), which is an environmentally friendly method that results in the formation of value-added products. Emphasis is given on three case studies where there are difficulties as regards the recycling of the plastic part: polymeric blends, since the existence of mixed plastic wastes may be challenging for their recycling; plastics originating in multilayer packaging, since the multilayer packaging consists of various materials, including plastics, paper, and metals that may be an obstacle for the recycling of the plastic part; and brominated flame-retarded plastics from waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE), since in this case safe handling is required in order to avoid environmental contamination and a pretreatment step before recycling may be of paramount importance. These three case studies along with the mentioned difficulties and suggestions in order to overcome them are presented here, with the aim of offering insights for future studies on the management of plastic materials.