Two French companies and two national industry associations have joined together to stem a comprehensive polystyrene recycling effort as part of the country’s contribution to the EU’s circular economy vision (see Plasteurope.com of 25.05.2018). Each player will make its own peculiar contribution to the project unveiled at the “World Materials Forum” in Nancy / France at the end of June.

The participants, energy and petrochemicals group Total (Paris; www.total.com), building materials producer Saint-Gobain (Paris; www.saint-gobain.com), recyclers association Citeo (Paris; www.citeo.com) and dairy products manufacturers group Syndifrais (Paris; www.syndifrais.com), have undertaken to evaluate the technical and cost feasibility of their scheme and launch it by 2020. Total has agreed to make its dedicated research and development resources available. Other players along the PS and recycling chains may join the project at a later date.

At the heart of the plans is the PS recycling technology successfully tested by Total in preliminary industrial trials completed in summer 2017 (see Plasteurope.com of 06.07.2017). At its plants in Carling / France and Feluy / Belgium, the multinational group intends to produce 4,000 t/y of virgin-quality PS containing at least 20% recyclate by 2019. The throughput of “several hundred tonnes” of post-consumer EPS waste will be drawn from the French household collection system. An estimated 110,000 t of PS-based packaging is placed on the French market annually.

Citeo, the recycling group formed through a merger of French national packaging waste company Eco-Emballages with Ecofolio (see Plasteurope.com of 15.09.2017), will have responsibility for sorting and preparing the collected waste material for reuse, while Syndifrais will evaluate the project’s technical findings to improve the eco-design of products such as yoghurt cups and thus facilitate their recycling. The project participants will also seek to identify uses for the recycled polymer as well as ensure that each step in its production is economically feasible.

Saint-Gobain is already participating in initiatives related to the development of a French circular economy. Its subsidiary Placoplatre based in Brittany collects discarded EPS at construction sites and reuses the material in its own production. In a later stage, Placoplatre additionally hopes to use the waste to produce building materials that contain a recyclate component. The company acquired by Saint-Gobain in 2005 has been working with Total since 2017, helping it to identify EPS construction waste that can be upgraded to produce higher quality insulation material.

This past spring, France introduced its circular economy roadmap “Feuille de route pour l’économie circulaire” (FREC) and set itself the goal of recycling 100% of plastics waste by 2025. This may be somewhat of an ambitious goal as currently only 22% of such waste is recycled, a figure well below the European average (see Plasteurope.com of 24.05.2018).