Smart additives will give a new life to plastics and textiles with coatings that are difficult to recycle

AIMPLAS has joined that DECOAT project, which consists of 17 partners from across the value chain, including design, manufacturing, NGos, and research and innovation.

The focus of the consortium is on coated and painted textiles and plastic materials which are not currently recyclable.

Ambitious plastic recycling targets of 50 per cent have been set by the European Plastics Industry, and to meet these targets, smart solutions to enable the circular use of textile and plastic parts with multi-layer coatings must be considered.

Many materials consist of more than one chemical component, hindering their recyclability, but ideally, all the components of an object after its end-of-life should be separated and fed to the most suited recycling streams.

AIMPLAS’ role in the DECOAT project is the selection of the components of the pilot recycling line, as well as taking part in set up and evaluation of the pilot line to recycle coated textiles and coated parts for outdoor gear, household electronics, buses, and automotive applications.

As well as this, AIMPLAS will tackle the quality analysis of the recycled materials and evaluation of their potential use.