Sustainable plastic — recycling and circular economy in the plastics industry
Regranulate, source sorting and new requirements make plastic injection moulding greener, not less relevant
Plastic has an image problem that doesn't always match reality: the material is often the lightest and most durable choice for a given task, but it is also visible as waste if not handled correctly. As a plastic worker you work in the middle of that tension — and the green transition of the industry means that recycling and material choice fill more and more of everyday life.
§Mechanical versus chemical recycling
The most widely used form of recycling is mechanical: used plastic is sorted, washed, shredded and melted back into new granules, called regranulate, which can be used in new production. The method is cheap and well-proven, but the quality of the regranulate typically decreases with each cycle because the polymer chains break down mechanically and thermally. Chemical recycling is a newer technology where plastic is instead broken down to its chemical building blocks (depolymerization), which can then be used to make new virgin-like plastic. Chemical recycling can handle more mixed and contaminated plastic waste, but is more expensive and less widespread today.
§Rules that push development
The EU's single-use plastic directive has, since it was implemented in Danish law, restricted a range of single-use plastic products and requires recycled content in certain packaging types. At the same time, Denmark has through waste regulations gradually introduced a national scheme where households must source-sort their waste—including plastic—into multiple fractions so more plastic waste actually becomes new material instead of incineration. For the plastics industry, this means increasing pressure to document and use recycled content in their own products.
| Virgin material | Regranulate | |
|---|---|---|
| Uniformity | Very high and predictable | Can vary from batch to batch |
| Price | Follows oil price and demand | Often cheaper but depends on supply |
| Properties over time. | Unchanged | Can be weakened by repeated reuse |
| Environmental footprint | Higher CO2 footprint per kilo | Make a short prioritization of today's most important tasks |
§What can you do yourself in production?
- 01Reduce waste by optimising settings so fewer items are rejected in the first place.
- 02Reuse pure production scrap — channels, scrap edges and rejects — as regrind directly in own production where quality requirements allow
- 03Avoid unnecessary mixing of material types so waste is easier to sort and recycle afterward.
- 04Be aware of material choice when a customer requests a specific recycled content in the finished product.
“The best waste is the waste that never arises — the next best is what comes back as raw material.”
— Basic principle in circular economy