Chairman's Corner

Dr Cris Arnold

We are concentrating on recycling of plastics and rubber in this issue, reflecting the growing attention in this sector, driven partly by regulations, partly by customer and shareholder requirements and partly by economics. There are some very in-depth technical issues to overcome in this area, as well as complex socio-economic aspects. As an example, the economics of polymer recycling are very much linked to the oil price, as a high oil price causes an increase in virgin materials costs, which will favour recycling, but also causes more attractive options for energy-from-waste options.With oil prices fluctuating as much as they have in recent months, coupled with other economic turbulence, any accurate forward-planning in this industry is obviously difficult. Despite this, the amount of recycling in general and polymer recycling in particular has increased significantly acrossWales in recent years, and there are further technical developments underway which will continue this trend. The articles in this issue give a few examples of this across a number of sectors.

When you study this area in detail, there can be some unexpected results. One example is the increasing use of biodegradable plastics. This may seem like a very environmentally-friendly development, and in some cases, they are very useful additions to our environmental armoury. For example separation of these materials at home for composting is beneficial, and they provide a good solution when materials are likely to end up in the natural environment, for instance in the agricultural sector. In other cases, there are some complications; if they end up in landfill, they will biodegrade, but will generate some methane in the process (which is far worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas). If they end up in a recycling process, they will add complexity to the separating and reprocessing methods. For instance, plastic
bottle recycling has been very effective as we generally only use three materials, (polyethylene, PET and PVC) which can easily be separated. If we start including a further biomaterial, such as PLA, separation may be much harder to achieve. Unfortunately, knowledge of these issues means that a trip to the supermarket can end up taking far longer while you decide what is the most environmentally-friendly option.