The “Life Plasmix” project (www.lifeplasmix.com) – funded by the EU’s “Life” programme, and focused on development of recycling processes for plastics from post-consumer waste – expects a new reclaim line for plastics waste in Spain to be fully operational after summer 2021.

The pilot plant implements an innovative recycling process that sorts polypropylene and polystyrene plastic films contained in municipal solid waste. The mechanical and optical types of equipment have already been installed in Alhendín / Spain. Technological centre Andaltec (Martos / Spain; www.andaltec.org) has performed the washing, extrusion and pelletising process of the materials classified by the University of Granada. These tests are intended to obtain recycled pellets. The technological centre for plastics also performed the injection moulding of specimens, as well as their characterisation in the laboratory.

The next phase is designing, manufacturing and validating the different prototypes of recycled materials, with the goal of meeting the standards required by automotive and food packaging sectors. Its aim also is to show that the materials can be used to manufacture new products through conventional plastic-transformation technologies.

FCC Medio Ambiente (Barcelona / Spain; www.fccma.com) is the coordinator of the project consortium that includes Spanish plastics converters association ANAIP (Madrid; www.anaip.es), Lindner Washtech (Grossbottwar / Germany; www.lindner-washtech.com), Pellenc Selective Technologies (Pertuis / France; www.pellencst.com) and Stadler Anlagenbau (Altshausen / Germany; www.w-stadler.de) as associated beneficiaries.