Black plastics and supply chains

Dear Readers,

Plastic has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives, both in our daily lives and in many industrial products. Living plastic-free is difficult to impossible, since we cannot do without plastics when we drive our cars or operate our equipment. Where to put the plastics at the end of their life? Circular economy is the much-cited key to conserving raw material resources. Our cover story looks at a challenging area of plastics recycling, the sorting of black plastics. The article starting on page 4 describes how black plastics can not only be separated from the material stream, but also sorted by type and thus recycled to a high quality.

Starting on page 15, you will find our special on RecyclingAKTIV in Karlsruhe with a preview of some trade show highlights.

„New age for the recycling industry?“ asks Dr. Joachim Harder in his technical article beginning on page 48. He identifies functioning supply chains as one of the main challenges, both for battery recycling and for metal scrap and plastics recycling. Look forward to this and a number of other interesting articles in this issue of recovery.