Abstract
Bioplastics are developed to replace oil-derived plastics due to the high consumption of oil and related environmental impacts of oil-derived plastics. It was predicted that bioplastics can potentially replace 94% of conventional plastic production. With their increasing market share, more bioplastics will end in conventional post-consumer plastic waste streams. Although part of bioplastics is biodegradable and could be biologically decomposed, mechanical recycling achieves higher ecological benefits mainly because of its low pollution risk and the reduction in requirement for virgin feedstock. In this study, the classification of lightweight packaging waste with inflow of bioplastics, more specifically polylactic acid (PLA), was analysed with near-infrared spectroscopy to evaluate the influence of bioplastics on sorting processes of conventional plastics. Besides which, the sortability of PLA was determined through investigating the physical and the spectroscopic characteristics of both non-degraded and degraded PLA. The results show that the classification of all the materials was possible with a pixel-based accuracy of higher than 97.4% and PLA does not influence the sorting process of conventional plastics regarding detection and classification. Furthermore, the sorting of PLA from post-consumer waste is possible, which makes further recycling theoretically achievable.
Highlights
Biobased and biodegradable plastics are produced and applied in different areas as a consequence of the high consumption of nonrenewable crude oil for the production of fossil-based plastics and the generated environmental problems (European Bioplastics, 2018), for example, ocean plastic pollution (Jambeck et al, 2015)
From the detection and classification point of view, the maximum acceptable mass percentages of polylactic acid (PLA) in other material fractions were not reached, which means that the inflow of PLA in lightweight packaging (LWP) would not influence the sorting of conventional plastics
The sorting of PLA from post-consumer waste is theoretically possible, which is the precondition for further processing and recycling
Summary
Biobased and biodegradable plastics are produced and applied in different areas as a consequence of the high consumption of nonrenewable crude oil for the production of fossil-based plastics and the generated environmental problems (European Bioplastics, 2018), for example, ocean plastic pollution (Jambeck et al, 2015). According to the study of Shen et al (2009), bioplastics have the potential to replace 94% of oil-derived conventional plastics. The market share of PLA was predicted to rise in the decades and could reach up to 16.2% of plastic production (Shen et al 2009). According to life cycle analysis, mechanical recycling of plastics achieves the highest environmental benefits because of its relatively simple process, low pollution risk and the reduction in requirement for virgin feedstock (Dilkes-Hoffman et al, 2019). Most of the biobased and biodegradable plastics can be processed with conventional waste management options and have the potential to be reproduced to new products (Colwill et al, 2010, Dilkes-Hoffman et al, 2019). A closed-loop recycling system for specific post-industrial bioplastics, for example, PLA, has been developed by RE|PLA Cycle GmbH (Recyclingmagazin, 2012)
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