Sustainable development

Direct reintroduction of waste products into the production process from which it comes from, as a total or partial replacement of a new raw material.

Waste which has been processed and/or combined, in order to obtain a product that can be used in the manufacturing process to replace an initial raw material.

Waste recovery process by mechanical means only, as opposed to chemical treatments. The mechanical recycling of LDPE as we do it includes sorting, crushing, washing, drying and remelting into granules ready to be extruded.

Chemical recycling refers to a process that changes the chemical structure of plastic waste by converting it into shorter molecules ready to be used in new chemical reactions. This high-tech process is not yet in industrial usage and, although it has the advantage of being able to recycle mechanically non-recyclable waste, it has a higher carbon footprint than new plastic due to its high energy consumption.

Upcycling is the action of recovering materials or products that are no longer useful in order to transform them into materials or products of greater or equal quality or usefulness. It is high-level recycling.

According to ISO 14021: "a characteristic of a product, packaging or associated component which can be taken from the waste stream using available processes and programs, and which can be collected, processed and returned to use in the form of raw materials or products'

Plastics are made from natural materials such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt and crude oil, through a process of polymerization or polycondensation. The term plastic is generally used to describe a wide variety of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that are used in a wide range of applications.

Refers to a plastic material entirely or partially made from a material of biological origin. These are bio-based plastics. Plastic can be biobased without being biodegradable, organic or compostable. Biomaterials used today are often sugar cane or potato starch. We must be careful about the origin of organic matter, both from an agricultural sustainability (soil depletion, deforestation, food competition, water management) and transportation (if the biomaterial comes from Latin America, its transport to Europe makes its carbon footprint much less interesting) point of view. A promising way to overcome these shortcomings is the use of marine algae. The research is in its early stages, but it even talks about a positive carbon balance (i.e. algae could consume CO2!).

A product is said to be biodegradable if after use, it can be decomposed (digested) naturally by living organisms (micro-organisms). No plastics are currently biodegraded before several hundreds of years.

To refer to the end of life processes of bioplastics, the terms composting and compostability are also often used. They refer to the biodegradation action in an aerobic environment under specific conditions which can be grouped into two main categories: Industrial composting, carried out in dedicated settings where temperature and humidity conditions, among other things, are rigorously controlled. Home composting, carried out under little or no control, for example at a private residence. No plastics can be composted in household compost today. Only industrial composts applying specific humidity and acidity levels and a precise temperature (around 60°c) manage to degrade certain plastics after about 6 months. After adding a certain amount of plastic there is also the question of reducing the quality of the compost (it can't be made entirely of plastic!).