June 13, 2024

Presentation by Prof. Dr. Uwe Lahl at the DGAW board meeting, 13 June 2024, Bremen: Sustainable circular economy must improve in two areas:

1. Recycling of plastics from cycles without a ‘closed and controlled chain’ ((EU) 2022/1616) leads to hazardous products. Products with or made from recycled materials must fulfil the same requirements as new products made from virgin plastic. A moratorium on the use of recyclates of unknown origin is therefore advisable for all plastic products that come into close contact with people (packaging, children’s toys, kitchen utensils, clothing, indoor products). Only recyclates from secure cycles should be used.

2. Open loop recycling, in which wood or cement rather than plastics are substituted, does not represent ecologically high-quality recycling. Quotas for open loop recycling therefore contribute nothing to the raw material transition in the plastics industry. This is why closed loop substitution quotas are being advocated, as provided for the first time by the new European Packaging Ordinance.

Prof. Dr. Uwe Lahl explained these proposals in more detail in his presentation at the DGAW board meeting on June 13, 2024 in Bremen. You can download his presentation via the link below.

June 7, 2024

The article by Prof. Dr. habil. Uwe Lahl and Dr. Barbara Zeschmar-Lahl on the topic “More than 30 Years of PVC Recycling in Europe — Need for Regulation” has been published in the Special Issue of Sustainability: Resources and Waste Management (Sustainability 2024, 16 (22), 4891).

As documented in our “Critical Inventory” (Sustainability 2024, 16 (9), 3854), the PVC industry’s track record to date of increasing the sustainability of PVC plastic is not convincing, although the industry takes a different view. The question, therefore, arises as to whether legislators should intervene in Europe or at national levels.

As we show in our paper, none of the waste disposal processes currently in use (mechanical recycling, energy recovery) have sufficient capabilities to absorb the additional quantities of PVC that will enter the waste management system from the existing stock in the future. Therefore, the only solution for today’s PVC waste, and especially the stock problem that is heading towards the waste management sector, is to collect and dispose of PVC separately. Chemical recycling and mono-incineration have the potential to solve the stock problem in the future. However, this will require the construction of separate collection and industrial plants, which, in the case of chemical recycling, will technically need two stages in order to separate the chlorine as HCl in advance.

The creation of a plant infrastructure with which PVC could be processed would relieve the other parts of the waste management sector of chlorine massively. VinylPlus/EuPC stated: “The European PVC manufacturers, converters and recyclers would be more than happy to process the waste if efficient logistic systems would exist to bring the waste to them”, and they “would welcome to make this separate collection mandatory.”

Now it’s Brussels’ turn.

Below you will find a link to download this and the previous article as well as the special edition with further interesting articles.

May 9, 2024

The article by Prof. Dr. habil. Uwe Lahl and Dr. Barbara Zeschmar-Lahl on the topic „More than 30 Years of PVC Recycling in Europe — A Critical Inventory“ has been published in the Special Issue of Sustainability: Resources and Waste Management (Sustainability 2024, 16, 3854).

PVC is the mass plastic to which the most diverse and quantitatively largest number of additives are added. This makes PVC difficult to recycle. In the 1980s, the PVC industry announced its commitment to improve the sustainability of the material through material recycling. But after three decades, the recycling result is rather meagre. The majority of PVC waste in Europe is still going to waste-to-energy plants. The many attempts to end the chlorine cycle via waste incineration and to expand chemical recycling in parallel have not been successful. The main reasons are the quantity and variety of additives, legacy chemicals (legacy additives), and economic interests.

At the end of 2023, the European Chemicals Agency ECHA presented an “Investigation Report” about PVC following a request of the EU Commission. In a further article, the authors analyse the regulatory consequences from their point of view. This article is currently in the review process and can be viewed and commented on at preprints.org.

Below you will find a link to download the article, to the Special Issue with further interesting articles, and to the second article under review.

April 30, 2024

The contractors were N³ Nachhaltigkeitsberatung Dr. Friege & Partner, Voerde (project management), and the Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP), Wuppertal, as well as BZL GmbH and Akademie Dr. Obladen, Berlin, as subcontractors. The final report on the project was published on the Federal Environment Agency’s website at the end of April 2024:

Friege H., Heidbüchel E., Zeschmar-Lahl B.: Indicators for sustainable management of chemicals. Contributions to upcoming development work under the new Global Framework for Chemicals. Ed.: Umweltbundesamt.

• UBA-Texte 79/2024 (English)
• UBA-Texte 78/2024 (German)

April 19, 2024

The updated article by Prof. Dr. habil. Uwe Lahl and his two co-authors on the topic of “Plastics recycling and hazardous substances – risk cycle” has been published in the  journal Müll und Abfall 4, 2024.

The production of new plastic articles has become increasingly demanding in terms of polymers and additive formulations. Can the recycling of mixed packaging plastics even meet today’s requirements for new products? We believe this is illusory. An honest assessment of the performance of post-consumer (PC) recycling of plastic packaging (packaging sold vs. recyclates in new products) for Germany shows: The result of quantitative material recycling is rather meager (perhaps 20%) and the recycled products are of inferior quality. Due to the overwhelming amount of data on hazardous substances (“legacy additives”) in plastic recyclates, we recommend that they no longer be used in consumer-related products (children’s toys, food contact materials/packaging, interior products, textiles, etc.).

Below you will find a link to the order form at Erich Schmidt Verlag.