With currently approximate 88 % of embedded carbon coming from fossil feedstocks, including oil, natural gas and coal, it becomes evidently clear that the estimated future demand of 1.15 Gt of carbon per year by 2050 must be met exclusively by the three available renewable carbon sources: biomass, the direct use of CO2 and recycling. While biomass solutions frequently face the food vs. feed debate, Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) efforts are not receiving the required policy support to develop at a rapid pace. Here, advanced recycling solutions can contribute significantly to keep and reuse embedded carbon in the technosphere
At the same time, with various legislative initiatives under the Green Deal, the EU is working on setting high mandatory recycled content quotas for many products – from packaging over textiles to cars and others. Recently leaked ambitions on mandatory recycled content for packaging aim at a ten-fold increase in the use of recycled material in this sector by 2040. To keep up with these requirements and still provide economically feasible high-quality materials and products, companies must stay up to day regarding innovative advanced recycling solutions. The international program of this year’s Advanced Recycling Conference presents technologies capable to address waste streams that are difficult to recycle including mixed plastics packaging and textiles aside others, with international contributions from industry, policy and academia addressing various recycling hot topics.
