Recovering contaminated plastics from automotive, construction and electrical appliance industry waste

Description

The NONTOX Project aimed to develop new decontamination processes for plastic materials in order to recover waste from electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), end-of-life vehicles (ELV), and construction and demolition (CD). 

The project involved recovering valuable materials from waste that is now being landfilled or incinerated under controlled conditions to contain the hazardous additives and unpleasant compounds, such as flame retardants, stabilisers and filling materials, that make it difficult to recycle. AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Centre, participated in the project.

Two different technologies (Extruclean and CreaSolv®) were used to eliminate these hazardous substances from waste plastics such as ABS, EPS, PS, HIPS, PE and PP. Together, these account for about half of EU demand for plastics, which is why it is important to recycle plastics rather than keeping up the current practice of landfilling or incinerating a significant part of this waste.

See here for more information on the technologies involved.

Main results

The project has now ended: see its publications page