ALL-IN for Plastics Recycling – PLASTin

The Business Finland-co-funded ALL-IN for Plastics Recycling – PLASTin – project supported plastic industry actors in developing systemic and environmentally optimised recycling concepts for challenging plastic streams. The project generated new knowledge about recycling processes and technologies, including sorting, pre-treatment, mechanical treatment and reject handling, as well as system-level approaches to plastics recycling. The aim was to improve the valorisation of challenging plastic waste streams and create new business opportunities based on recycling. The project ran from 1 March 2020 to 30 June 2022, with a total budget of €2.81 million.

Developing systemic solutions for plastics recycling

Plastics have many important qualities and play a significant role in the global economy, but their use, disposal and recycling also create major environmental challenges. Some plastic streams are particularly difficult and expensive to recycle, resulting in plastics ending up in landfills, low-efficiency incineration or the environment.

Improving the recycling rates of plastic waste requires new and improved technological solutions for both mechanical and chemical recycling. In particular, challenging materials such as multilayer plastics and plastics containing additives require better sorting, separation and treatment technologies.

The PLASTin project addressed these challenges by exploring new approaches to plastics recycling and supporting the development of a more circular plastics economy.

What was developed

The PLASTin project focused on three areas of plastics recycling:

Market system and shaping

Assessing future recovered plastic waste flows considering foreseeable changes in packaging materials, recovery systems and legislation, and studying how an environmentally optimised system for scalable plastics recycling could be designed together with its acceptance and regulatory environment.

No-waste recycling

Providing the necessary information on economically and environmentally optimal collection and pre-treatment concepts, systems and technologies.

Recycling of challenging plastic fractions

Studying ways to recycle multilayer plastics, such as plastics from liquid packaging board, and plastics from WEEE in an economically viable manner.

Collaboration across industry and research

PLASTin brought together industrial partners and research organisations to develop new approaches to plastics recycling.

Industrial partners

Core partners

BMH Technology Oy · Borealis Polymers Oy · Fortum Waste Solutions Oy · Kuusakoski Oy

Collaborative partners

Neste Oyj · Griffin Refineries Oy · Rosk’n Roll Oy · Muovipoli Oy · Suomen Uusiomuovi Oy

Research organisations

Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) · Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT) · Tampere University (TUNI) · VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland · Arcada University of Applied Sciences

Coordinated by CLIC Innovation