German plastics centre SKZ (Würzburg; www.skz.de) has announced the completion of a project aimed at simplifying the use of secondary materials by matching processors all over the globe with suitable materials.

The project, titled Circular Optimisation for Plastics (Cyclops), kicked off in 2021 as a collaborative effort with German partners Wuppertal Institute (Wuppertal; www.wupperinst.org), GreenDelta (Berlin; www.greendelta.com), and Cirplus (Hamburg; www.cirplus.com).

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The partners said the resulting open-source Cyclops platform is a user-friendly tool that allows waste owners, recyclers, and converters to “make the most economically viable and environmentally friendly decisions for the recycling of plastics waste and the uptake of recycled plastics”.

Based on user input, Cyclops features economic and environmental assessments, guidance for waste application and Design4Recycling, and AI-enabled recommendations for quality specifications.

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“Cyclops is a milestone in breaking down existing barriers in the recycling market,” Jan Werner, group manager sustainable and circular products at SKZ, said. The partners noted that recycling and reuse in plastics manufacturing has a long way to go. In the meantime, the industry is both losing out on “opportunities for resource conservation” and contributing to “avoidable environmental pollution”.

The Cyclops project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of its Digital GreenTech funding guideline.