7.6 Recycling

For ecological and economical reasons, materials recycling is of great importance as an integral component of plastics waste management.

The economic driving forces for recycled plastics have been anything but constant during the last 50 years due to large fluctuations in prices of virgin materials and supply. Early recycling efforts were seen only as a means of lowering material s consumption within the industry by mixing clean, uncontaminated processing waste with virgin material. During the 1960s, virgin material prices fell abruptly and recycling activities stagnated. In the 1970s they picked up again as an oil embargo caused material shortages. During the late 1980s material prices decreased again. As legislative pressure on industry and consumer preferences are evolving, however, recycling is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity and business opportunity [201].

Plastics became in the 1990s the symbol of a throwaway society and were regarded as a major culprit of the landfill crisis. The response of the industry is plastics recycling [237-241]. Severe restrictions are being imposed on two of the most popular waste management techniques, landfill and incineration [201].

Plastic building products occupy the second place in quantity of residual plastics in municipal waste [242]. The important benefits of polymer recycling consist in a reduction of waste generation, less need for landfills and from an economic point of view a reduction of the consumption of resources. However the amount of used plastic waste from the construction sector is likely to increase in...