Omnexus members interested in recycling solutions is an active and an ever increasing sub-community. But there are some disparities within the entire Omnexus community. This is what we are going to review in details in this month’s Community Insight on Omnexus.
We know the current focus on environmentally friendly solutions and the global warming debate are driving the need for increased recycling of materials, including plastics. Resin suppliers are launching special grades containing post-consumer recycled content, with diverse levels. OEMs are increasing their product launch communication around designs incorporating recycled materials. This global trend is real and powerful, but it is not being followed the same way by all markets. There are preferred markets, materials, and polymers addressing this trend. For our current analysis we took as a reference the entire Omnexus community members by ranking the markets they are working in. This kind of information is taken from the Omnexus registration step. We then selected recent Omnexus documents related to polymer recycling:
September 2009 Opinion Space: “What are the main benefits of using recycled polymers?“
7th January 2010 R&D Highlight: “The chemical recycling of polyurethanes“
13th August 2009 Innovation Brief: “Mobile phone housing entirely made from PET bottle wastes“
Markets ranking for polymer recycling documents:
The two tables below are comparing the top ten market shares of the Omnexus community with the top ten market shares of the September 2009 Opinion Space readers.
Top Ten Markets of the Omnexus Community Members |
Top Ten Markets of the Readers of September’s Opinion Space |
Here starts one of the first disparities we mentioned at the beginning of this Community Insight: Apart from the two biggest markets the Omnexus members are working with, the above rankings are not the same at all. And for the Automotive and Packaging markets a significant decrease is noted, meaning recycling of polymer is proportionally less followed by people involved with the Automotive and the Packaging industries… this may sounds surprising!
However this is not very much surprising in fact: Automotive is indeed a big market for polymers, and there are already heavy and big plastic parts manufactured with recycled materials. However, there are two main reasons explaining this decrease in shares of members:
- Recycling materials of a car is much easier when it is glass or metal! Polymers are a real challenge for car part recyclers. So alternate solutions will be preferred. This will probably change in the future because of new regulations. The end-of-life European directive is planning increased amount of recyclable materials AND recycled material to manufacture a car. Up to now car makers and tier ones were spending their efforts and money on the easiest ways to achieve the required levels. But the remaining percentages of recyclable and recycled materials will be the most expensive, by far!
- The supply chain of car makers is a critical, if not a strategic step in car manufacturing activity. Does anyone know how much does the supply breakage cost the car makers per day, and at the end to suppliers? Controlling flows of shipments often has a direct influence on decision of buying a brand or another. And being able to answer the demand when a car model is launched is for sure helping car makers to gain market shares… This is where using post-consumer recycled polymers is bringing a new and very serious threat to the car makers supply chain.
With regards to the Packaging industry there are also many good reasons that explain this under-representation of this industry from the readers of the September 2009 Opinion Space:
- As for the Automotive industry detailed above there are other materials widely used in the Packaging industry that are much easier to recycle: paper, cardboard, glass and metal.
- The packaging industry is also very active in a solution that is directly competing with polymer recycling: the use of bioplastics.
- The packaging industry is also spending much of its efforts and money today to cope with material consumption reduction, a step ahead of recycling. This initiative is also seriously framed by regulations, so there are no compromises on this need.
On the other hand there are markets that are more represented in the readership of the September 2009 Opinion Space than they are in the entire Omnexus community: Appliances (+1.72%); Household products & consumer goods (+1.72%); Electrical market (+1.63%); Electronics (+0.82%); Healthcare (+1.02). “Sports & Leisures” and “Fibers/ Textiles/ Carpets” are not even in the top ten markets of the Omnexus community, as they are listed in the Opinion Space readership.
Considering both the “Electrical market” and the “Electronics/ Computers” markets we can say this is reflecting all recent activities made from the E&E industry, as well as demonstrating results of regulations implementation. This industry is indeed facing challenging regulations dealing with environmentally friendly initiatives, and these regulations were implemented step by step: ban of toxic chemical substances to ease recycling, creation of ECO labels, improvement of traceability. We now see the most famous brands creating their own environmentally conscious labels.
Considering both the “Appliances” and the “Sports & Leisures” markets we know they are directly in contact with consumers, thus directly impacted by the current environmental consciousness rising from new societal behaviors. Recycling is not anymore simply good for the planet but also a trendy behavior! Furthermore, the “Sports & Leisures” markets needs to be coherent with the mindset of its customers: people having outdoor activities, much more taking care of the Nature than the average.
The slight increase in the “Healthcare/ medical” is however surprising: this market is using more and more plastics, with very high purity requirement, and severe control on the plastic behavior over time (additives migration, polymer and properties degradation). One could think having clean, biocompatible, sterilization resistant plastics means stepping away from polymer recycling! But there are two good reasons for breaking this common thought:
- Advances have been made in developing recycling techniques, and commercial announcements have been made recently so that obtaining post consumer recycled high purity grades is do-able.
- The “Healthcare/ Medical” market is also famous for its many single-use applications, leading to high amount of wastes. One way of fighting against this wrong image and reducing the financial consequences of this high amount of wastes is to improve material recycling, and increase the use of recycled materials.
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