What we are doing
Plastics production has surged over the past 50 years, from 15 million tonnes in 1964 to 311 million tonnes in 2014, and is expected to double again over the next 20 years, as plastics come to serve increasingly many applications. Europe is the second largest producer of plastics materials in the world (after China), producing 20% of thermoplastics and polyurethanes. Plastics Europe indicated that the latter year, plastics demand in Europe was 47.8 Mt, what highlights the importance of this sector. Plastic packaging represents 39.5% of European plastics demand. The plastic packaging value chain covers the whole material cycle, from polymer production to its final disposal. The improvements to be developed within CIRC-PACK aim at reaching near zero plastics to landfill, which might result in a new plastic packaging value chain. CIRC-PACK will analyse the whole current plastic packaging value chain (from feedstock development to plastic waste sorting and recycling or discarding processes), as well as identify legal restrictions, bottlenecks and other non-technological barriers that hamper the optimisation of this value chain. Local governments participated in CIRC-PACK to test and validate the final phase of the plastics value chain and provide insights into the plastic waste sorting.
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