The development of recycled plastics has become a general trend

According to the latest Post-Consumer Recycled Plastics Market Report 2023-2033 released by Visiongain, the global post-consumer recycled plastics (PCR) market will be worth US$16.239 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a rate of 9.4% during the forecast period of 2023-2033. Growth at a compound annual growth rate.
At present, the era of low-carbon circular economy has begun, and plastic recycling has become an important means of low-carbon recycling of plastics. Plastics, as consumables in daily life, bring convenience to people’s lives, but they also bring many unfavorable factors, such as land occupation, water pollution and fire hazards, which will threaten the environment on which human beings live. The emergence of the recycled plastics industry not only solves the problem of environmental pollution, but also saves energy consumption, helps ensure energy security, and helps achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals.

01
It is not advisable to pollute the environment
How to “recycle” waste plastic?
While plastics bring convenience to consumers, they also cause serious damage to the environment and marine life.
McKinsey estimates that global plastic waste will reach 460 million tons by 2030, a full 200 million tons more than in 2016. It is urgent to find a feasible waste plastic treatment solution.

Recycled plastics refer to plastic raw materials obtained by processing waste plastics through physical or chemical methods such as pretreatment, melt granulation, and modification. After the waste plastic enters the production line, it undergoes processes such as cleaning and descaling, high-temperature sterilization, sorting, and crushing to become recycled raw flakes; the raw flakes then go through processes such as cleaning (separating impurities, purifying), rinsing, and drying to become regenerated clean flakes; finally, according to the According to the needs of different application fields, various recycled plastic raw materials are made through granulation equipment, which are sold to various enterprises at home and abroad and used in polyester filament, packaging plastics, household appliances, automotive plastics and other fields.

The biggest advantage of recycled plastics is that they are cheaper than new materials and degradable plastics, and according to different performance needs, only certain properties of plastics can be processed and corresponding products can be manufactured. When the number of cycles is not too many, recycled plastics can maintain similar properties to traditional plastics, or they can maintain stable properties by mixing recycled materials with new materials.

02The development of recycled plastics has become a general trend ‍

After the “Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution” was released in China in January last year, the degradable plastics industry has risen rapidly, and the prices of PBAT and PLA have been rising. At present, the proposed production capacity of domestic PBAT has exceeded 12 million tons. The main targets of these projects are That is the domestic and European markets.

However, the SUP plastic ban issued by the European Union in early July this year clearly prohibited the use of aerobically degradable plastics to produce disposable plastic products. Instead, it emphasized the development of plastic recycling and proposed quantified use of recycled materials for projects such as polyester bottles. This is undoubtedly a severe impact on the rapidly expanding degradable plastics market.

Coincidentally, plastic bans in Philadelphia, the United States, and France also ban specific types of degradable plastics and emphasize the recycling of plastics. Developed countries in Europe and the United States are paying more attention to plastic recycling, which is worthy of our reflection.

The change in the EU’s attitude towards degradable plastics is firstly due to the poor performance of degradable plastics themselves, and secondly, degradable plastics cannot fundamentally solve the problem of plastic pollution.

Biodegradable plastics can decompose under certain conditions, which means that their mechanical properties are weaker than conventional plastics and they are incompetent in many fields. They can only be used to produce some disposable products with low performance requirements.

Moreover, currently common degradable plastics cannot be degraded naturally and require specific composting conditions. If degradable plastic products are not recycled, the harm to nature will not be much different from that of ordinary plastics.
So we believe that the most interesting application area for degradable plastics is to be recycled into commercial composting systems together with wet waste.

In the framework of recyclable waste plastics, processing waste plastics into recycled plastics through physical or chemical methods has greater sustainable significance. Regenerated plastics not only reduce the consumption of fossil resources, but also reduce the carbon emissions during its processing. Less than the process of producing raw materials, it has an inherent green premium.

Therefore, we believe that Europe’s policy change from degradable plastics to recycled plastics does have scientific and practical significance.

From a market perspective, recycled plastics have a wider space than degradable plastics. Biodegradable plastics are limited by insufficient performance and can basically only be used for disposable products with low requirements, while recycled plastics can theoretically replace virgin plastics in most fields.

For example, currently domestically very mature recycled polyester staple fiber, recycled PS from Inko Recycling, recycled polyester bottle flakes provided by Sanlian Hongpu for overseas EPC services, recycled nylon EPC for Taihua New Materials, as well as polyethylene and ABS There are already recycled materials, and the total scale of these fields has the potential to be hundreds of millions of tons.

03Policy norm development

Recycled plastics industry has new standards

Although the domestic industry focused on degradable plastics in the early stage, the policy level has actually been advocating plastic recycling and reuse.

In recent years, in order to promote the development of the recycled plastics industry, our country has successively issued many policies, such as the “Notice on Issuing the Action Plan for Plastic Pollution Control during the 14th Five-Year Plan” issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2021 to increase the Recycling of plastic waste, supporting the construction of plastic waste recycling projects, publishing a list of enterprises that regulate the comprehensive utilization of waste plastics, guiding relevant projects to cluster in resource recycling bases, industrial resource comprehensive utilization bases and other parks, and promoting the scale of the plastic waste recycling industry Standardize, clean and develop. In June 2022, the “Technical Specifications for Waste Plastic Pollution Control” was released, which put forward new requirements for domestic waste plastic industry standards and continued to standardize industrial development.

The recycling and reuse of waste plastics is a complex process. With technological innovation, product and industrial structure adjustment, my country’s waste plastic recycled products are developing in the direction of high quality, multiple varieties, and high technology.

Currently, recycled plastics have been used in textiles, automobiles, food and beverage packaging, electronics and other fields. A number of large-scale recycling transaction distribution centers and processing centers have been formed across the country, mainly distributed in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning and other places. However, my country’s waste plastic recycling enterprises are still dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, and technically they still focus on physical recycling. There is still a lack of good environmentally friendly disposal and resource recycling plans and successful cases for low residual value waste plastics such as garbage waste plastics.
With the introduction of the “plastic restriction order”, “waste classification” and “carbon neutrality” policies, my country’s recycled plastics industry has ushered in good development opportunities.

Recycled plastics are a green industry encouraged and advocated by national policies. It is also a very important area in the reduction and resource utilization of large amounts of waste plastic solid waste. In 2020, some regions in my country began to implement strict garbage classification policies. In 2021, China completely banned the import of solid waste. In 2021, some regions in the country began to strictly implement the “plastic ban order”. More and more companies are following the “plastic restriction order”. Under the influence, we began to notice the multiple values ​​of recycled plastics. Due to its low price, environmental protection advantages, and policy support, the recycled plastic industry chain from source to end is making up for its shortcomings and developing rapidly. For example, the implementation of waste classification has positive significance for promoting the development of the domestic waste plastic resource recycling industry, and facilitates the establishment and improvement of the domestic plastic closed-loop industrial chain.
At the same time, the number of registered enterprises related to recycled plastics in China increased by 59.4% in 2021.

Since China banned the import of waste plastics, it has affected the global recycled plastics market structure. Many developed countries have to find new “exits” for their increasing accumulation of garbage. Although the destination of these wastes has always been other emerging countries, such as India, Pakistan or Southeast Asia, the logistics and production costs are much higher than those in China.

Recycled plastics and granulated plastics have broad prospects, the products (plastic granules) have a wide market, and the demand from plastic companies is also large. For example, a medium-sized agricultural film factory needs more than 1,000 tons of polyethylene pellets annually, a medium-sized shoe factory needs more than 2,000 tons of polyvinyl chloride pellets annually, and smaller individual private enterprises also need more than 500 tons of pellets annually. Therefore, There is a large gap in plastic pellets and cannot meet the demand of plastic manufacturers. In 2021, the number of registered companies related to recycled plastics in China was 42,082, a year-on-year increase of 59.4%.
It is worth noting that the latest hot spot in the field of waste plastic recycling, “chemical recycling method”, is becoming a new method to control waste plastic pollution while taking into account resource recycling. At present, the world’s leading petrochemical giants are testing the waters and laying out the industry. The domestic Sinopec Group is also forming an industry alliance to promote and lay out the waste plastic chemical recycling method project. It is expected that in the next five years, waste plastic chemical recycling projects, which are at the forefront of investment, will create a new market with an industrial scale of hundreds of billions, and will play a positive role in promoting plastic pollution control, resource recycling, energy conservation and emission reduction.

With the future scale, intensification, channel construction and technological innovation, the gradual parkization, industrialization and large-scale construction of the recycled plastic industry are the mainstream development trends.