The Frontier of Plastics Recycling: Rethinking Waste as a Resource for High-Value Applications

Following the circular economy hierarchy of reduce and reuse, recycling is the third layer to close the loops for materials and decouple their value from consumption. Polymeric materials ("plastics") are in principle well suited for recycling, as they can be reprocessed with relatively low energy input as a material, cleaved back into their monomers or converted back to feedstock. Today, these approaches still fall short in quantitatively diverting waste towards reuse. This perspective describes the industry challenges for recycling back into high value applications of polymers, and the portfolio of existing and emerging technology solutions. Sustainable design of products and polymers, recycling technologies, appropriate business models, and enabling technologies converge at the frontier of plastics recycling, for a transformation of the industry towards circularity and greenhouse gas emission neutrality.