Key points
Plastics have changed the world, providing lightweight, durable alternatives to natural materials—often at much lower costs. Manufacturers have found countless uses for plastics, from water bottles to car bumpers. Yet while consumption of plastics has accelerated over the last three decades, innovation in how to recycle these materials has failed to keep pace.
While plastic consumption has grown threefold over the last two decades, only about 12% of plastic waste is recycled, with the rest making its way into landfills and oceans[1]. Concerns about managing this waste are growing, along with regulations and compliance mandates.
In January 2018, China, which had handled nearly half the world’s recyclable waste for 25 years, banned the import of most plastics, leaving many governments scrambling to find new ways to manage plastic waste.[2] Cities around the world have enacted bans on polystyrene food containers, plastic bags, straws and cutlery; there are higher expectations for polymer recycling to take place in the country of origin.
In response to this changing landscape, many companies are incorporating sustainability targets into their business goals, including safety, asset integrity, emissions management and waste reduction.
But how can they best meet these objectives? Technology offers polymer manufacturing companies opportunities to gain higher returns and drive new levels of optimisation.
Organisations who take advantage of these solutions position themselves to meet challenging sustainability goals while maintaining a profitable enterprise. Leveraging digital tools to develop new products and processes, reduce waste and optimise operations helps companies improve the bottom line.
Building a circular economy
Today, there is a US$ 120 billion market opportunity for polymer recycling in North America alone.[3] In the past, most recycled plastics were reused to create less-valuable products—this so-called downcycling is not the most compelling use case for profit-minded polymer manufacturers.
Instead polymer producers that wish to seize the opportunity to build a circular economy, and redefine growth to deliver both profitability and sustainability should be making use of process simulation tools that allow them to find new ways to reduce unwanted by-products and the environmental impact of downcycling. These tools enable the modelling of new recycling processes, measuring their viability.
Not only can process simulation tools help to improve product quality and consistency, solutions that include economic evaluation tools can also measure the profitability of the new processes that are being modelled.
Modelling batch processes can also help polymer producers to respond to customer demands faster and more profitably. This provides them with insight into how the polymer changes over time as the reactants are consumed, while optimising a batch for a customer’s specifications. In turn, this removes the trial and error that is commonplace in experimenting with batch recipes, accelerating speed to market, reducing waste and improving profitability.
Closing the loop
When it comes to reducing material waste, supply chain scheduling might not seem like the most obvious function to assess. Yet there are two ways in which supply chain scheduling technology can help. This technology can leverage data to intelligently optimise the order in which different grades of material are produced.
In turn, this can lessen the volume of waste generated between different production campaigns by decreasing the number and duration of transitions. Not only can this optimisation improve the agility of operations, it can also save polymer producers millions through the reduction in off-spec product being produced.
It’s anticipated that the demand for recycled plastics could be between 5 and 7.5 million metric tons — and supply is stuck at just 6% of the current demand[4]. Yet as demand increases and digital transformation makes the recycling process more economical, more producers are beginning to recognise the opportunities in recycling plastics.
Using the right digital tools, recycled plastics can be cheaper than prime plastics. What’s more, pricing is less volatile compared to prime plastics and the dependency on non-renewable fossil fuels is eliminated.
There’s no disputing that the market is changing as the demand for recycled plastics increases and processes become ever more feasible. Polymer producers can adapt by leveraging the power of digital solutions without substantial investment.
Many can use the very same digital solutions that have streamlined product development, using them to further their competitive advantage by optimising operations and delivering on the market’s growing expectation for sustainability.
References
[1] “The Plastics Paradox.” The Long & Short of It, Goldman Sachs, October 15, 2019.
2 “Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling.” Cheryl Katz, Yale Environment 360, March 7, 2019.
3 “Accelerating Circular Supply Chains for Plastics: A Landscape of Transformational Technologies that Stop Plastic Waste, Keep Materials in Play and GrowMarkets.” Closed Loop Partners, April 2019.
4 “Data and Analysis for Polymer Flow in North America.” IHS Markit, 2019.
