Di-Plast: developing digital quality control for recyclate PM material flow
Use of recycled plastic material (rPM) in North West Europe is homogeneously low. In packaging and building, the highest plastic-consuming sectors, only 8% of plastic employed is recyclate (Plastics Europe 2016). This is often due to lack of information on the purity and composition of recycled plastics.
The Interreg NWE research project Di-Plast develops digital technology to enable complete documentation and the quality assurance of recycled plastic material flows. Sensor technology, data analysis and process management will be used to create the information and processes that enable recycled plastics to be used safely, encouraging its uptake as secondary raw material.
The Di-Plast technology is to be tested and refined in four pilot projects. The region of operation is North West Europe, starting with Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. 12 companies, clusters and associations that cover various parts of the value chain (source, collection, processing, compounding, use) participate in the project.
The project is still open to new participants (enterprises and experts in plastics and recyclate processing) from Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The project aims at delivering a digitally validated quality control system for rPM through end-to-end tracking of the material flow, hence improving quality of recycled plastics and increase their uptake in construction and packaging sectors.
The operational target is the uptake of additional 18.000t of rPM by project activities until March 2022. When the tools are developed successfully they will be rolled out in whole Europe and rPM uptake will increase further.