Recycling has become second nature for many of us, but what products in Europe still struggle to find a second life?
Municipalities collected half a tonne of waste per person living in the EU in 2023, the latest figures show, with only around48 per cent of that getting recycled.
The pressure is now on to raise that statistic. New EU rules state that by the end of this year, 55 per cent of municipal waste and 65 per cent of packaging waste must be prepared for re-use or recycling.
But European countries are struggling to hit these goals. Estimates show that two-thirds of EU countries will miss at least one target, and ten member states including Greece, Hungary and Poland risk missing both targets.
So what products are proving to be the most difficult to recycle – and what’s being done to solve it?
A laser to melt smartphone glass
Around 75 per cent of Europe’s glass packaging (e.g. bottles and jars) is recycled each year, most of which gets melted down and recast as new glass packaging.
But glass found in X-ray tubes, LCDs, and smartphone screens are often chemically altered. For example, glass in smartphone screens might be chemically-strengthened to make them more resistant to cracks or scratches. This makes it difficult for conventional kilns to melt down.
“To change the temperature [in kilns] to just a couple of degrees takes a lot of time,” says Juan Pou from the University of Vigo in Spain.
Instead he and other researchers in the EU-funded Everglass project are creating a prototype glass recycling machine that uses a laser to melt the glass. Unlike a kiln, the laser can be quickly adjusted to the temperature needed to melt any type of glass, and potentially even reform it to new products.
They hope the machine can also recycle the medical glass vials used to store COVID-19 vaccines. Hospitals often don’t know what to do with the glass and just throw it away, says Juan. “The quality of the glass itself is very good,” he says. “We are working to reuse this glass for other technical applications.”
Dismantled magnets from wind turbines and e-scooters
Since they were invented in 1984, demand for neodymium magnets has only grown. They remain the strongest magnets on the market and can now be found in wind turbines, electric car motors, and even e-scooters.
But the magnets are made from what the EU calls ‘critical raw materials’ – materials that are important for industry but supplied from geopolitically-risky areas.
The raw materials could be recycled, but there is so far no working industrial or commercial process to do so. For now, nobody knows how to best deal with this future waste.
”Due to the strength of this magnet type, it needs special attention and equipment,” says Lorenzo Berzi of the University of Florence, who is working on ways to safely recycle these magnets in the EU-funded Harmony project.
This international project is looking at ways to improve the whole recycling process – from better collection and assisted dismantling, to recovering the metals and creating new magnets.
This will help build a future European magnet recycling industry, says Lorenzo. “There would be a huge demand in the future for this material, and this means that someone is going to recycle that,” he says.
Recycling food waste to create ‘biostimulant’ fertiliser
The EU generates over 59 million tonnes of food waste each year, roughly equivalent to 132 kg per inhabitant. Of this, 11 per cent is caused by hotels, restaurants and catering services (HORECA for short).
“It’s estimated that 99 per cent of HORECA waste is landfilled,” says Bruno Iñarra, a food sustainability researcher at the AZTI research centre in Spain. Although some might become compost, this usually does not have enough soil nutrients for agriculture.
His work in the EU-funded LANDFEED project wants to transform waste from restaurants and food services into bio based fertilisers fit to be used by farms.
This is difficult, he explains, because each batch of food waste is different and a lot of the technology to treat food waste is still in early development. The five-county project is focusing on the processes and technologies that can adapt to these challenges to create sustainable fertilisers.
They are using a ‘solid state fermentation’ method to grow microorganisms in the food waste using little to no water. These microorganisms can then produce enzymes to digest the waste and produce ‘bioactive compounds’ – molecules that help crop plants to grow better.
How can nappies be recycled?
Although a godsend for parents, nappies have proven to be an ecological headache.
Analystsestimate 46 billion nappies are thrown away each year, though most disposable nappies take between 150 to 500 years to decompose (biodegradable alternatives take around 50).
Within the nappies, the ‘super-absorbant polymers’ that absorb moisture make them difficult to recycle. These polymers form a gel when wet, and must first be treated to release any moisture before being cut into small pieces for the plastics and fibres to then be recycled.
This is often a lengthy, expensive process that means most of these nappies end up in incinerators, says Edwin Verhoef of Diaper Recycling Europe.
“That’s really a matter of business case, because the cleaner the reclaimed materials, the higher the price,’’ said Edwin.
Diaper Recycling Europe has built a pilot plant based in the Netherlands to treat this waste. The process involves deactivating the polymers, separating the materials, and removing any pathogens or medicine traces from the reclaimed materials and wastewater.
The plant has so far proven that it can separate all the materials of the nappies, and a later phase will decontaminate the materials and wastewater. A later phase will semi-automate the process at a larger scale, says Edwin.
No butts about it
Cigarette butts have long been the scourge of street-cleaners and beach-goers throughout Europe.
Research has shown that these non-biodegradable cigarette butts contain over 7,000 toxic chemicals that are released into the marine environment.
The difficulty in recycling them is down to the difficulty in collecting them. Cigarette butts are expensive and tricky to collect because they easily spread throughout the environment, are small, and are difficult to segregate from other waste.
But as they remain in the environment, they leach harmful chemicals that can harm soil bacteria and marine life.
Several European start-ups are trying to remedy this by installing new cigarette bins in cities and then turning the cigarette butts into new products.
The Italian start-up Re-Cig has installed over 4,500 of their cigarette bins in all of the country’s regions.
Once collected, the cigarette butts are then washed, dried and mixed at a controlled temperature to extract a plastic polymer called cellulose acetate. This is then ground into granules to be re-used in areas such as 3D printers.
The idea has proven popular; today Re-cig works with more than 350 companies and 80 public administrations, says Marco Fimognari, Re-Cig founder & CEO.
