The plastic industry's approach to waste management

Plastics offer society lots of helpful properties, and they are also eco-efficient in many ways - including when a product comes to the end of its useful life. This is when end-of-life management becomes necessary. All plastics can either be recycled as material and/or chemical feedstock for further use; or the embedded energy can be recovered. The high calorific value of plastics is actually similar to that of fuel oil. Therefore, plastics waste can either be recycled into new products or it can partly substitute for fuel conserving primary resources.  Plastic is just too valuable to waste.

In order to achieve the economically and ecologically optimised management of plastics waste, society needs to learn how. To achieve the high level of waste recovery, which is already in evidence in several European countries (optimising the value of plastics and diverting plastics waste from landfill), a combination of all end-of-life management techniques is required.
Education is a key part of this. The plastics industry has invested, and continues to invest, in a widespread programme to transfer its knowledge about end-of-life waste management and share it with relevant stakeholders.

To find out more about:

• Why plastics are too valuable to be just thrown away
• How can the value of either material or energy be recovered at a plastic product's end-of-life
• What the plastics industry is doing to promote plastic recycling
  
  

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