Transforming Waste for a Circular, Safe, and Low Carbon Future

The future of waste is rapidly evolving as value chains seek to identify opportunities to effectively collect, recycle and reuse materials in multiple market sectors. Thought leaders envision that waste, including both plastics and bio-based, will be viewed as a valuable resource that can be used to create new jobs and an effective set of ecosystems by which it is transformed into new materials or building blocks. Established processes such as mechanical recycling will continue to evolve with the implementation of technologies that effectively sort, clean, and convert back into feedstocks that approach the performance delivered by virgin plastic resins used today. Additional advances in recycling systems that convert feedstocks back into hydrocarbon or oligomeric materials will be a vital part of the ecosystems where the demand for food-contact approved materials or routes to materials employed outside of the packaging sector require more innovative developments. Across the material recovery and repurposing systems, low-carbon solutions will continue to be demanded as the concepts of circularity and low-carbon become more entwined in both policy and infrastructure investment. This talk will discuss the options available and considerations for global and regional implementation.