Plastics Focus Area

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Plastics Focus Area

• IAER Roadmap Development Workshop
• April 2001
• Patricia S. Dillon
• The Gordon Institute at Tufts University

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Roadmap 2000 PresentationChallenges for Plastics

• Product recovery and resin consolidation to
  achieve volumes needed for
• cost-effective processing
• continuity of supply
• market development
• Economics of identification, sorting and
  processing mixed resin stream
• Lack of feedstream qualification material
  specification for recycled-content resins to
  facilitate market development
• ID and development of additional markets,
  particularly for mixed plastic resins

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Roadmap 2000 Discussion

• Sourcing
• Processing
• Markets

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Roadmap 2000 Discussion

• Emphasis on sourcing
• Increasing demand for high quality recycled resin
• Not enough supply form, quality, location
• Export of electronic equipment and plastics
• Impacts US recycling infrastructure development
• Recommendation
• IAER conduct sourcing survey

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Roadmap 2000 Discussion

• Proposed IAER Sourcing Survey
• How much volume (weight) of electronics do you
  get?
• How much do you export?
• How much of non-export is dismantled?
• What do you do with the plastics collected during
  dismantling?
• How much does the plastic weigh?
• Do you need to know what types of plastic you are
  handling?

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Activities Since Roadmap 2000

• Sourcing Survey Action Item of the Market
  Development Task Force of the Tufts Stakeholder
  Dialogues
• On-line survey of electronics recyclers and OEM
  generators
• Better understand current supply processing
  capabilities of generators
• Types of resins, quantities, sources, form,
  quality, location, current markets
• Results expected August 2001

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Other Related Activities

• Tufts Stakeholder Dialogues
• Developing standard grading system and quality
  specifications
• Electronics ETP Recycled Material
  Characterization Matrix
• Establishes quality grades that categorize resins
  by form (e.g., loose, baled, granulated) and type
  (e.g., mixed, computer, sorted plastics)
• Specifies material quality variables for each
  quality grade (e.g., color, contaminants,
  physical properties), where appropriate, will
  specify acceptable ranges of values
• Will provide standard test protocols for
  measuring the quality specification
• Plan to integrate grading system into an on-line
  plastics trading platform

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Other Related Activities

• Tufts Stakeholder Dialogues
• Analyzing alternative scenarios for resin
  processing to determine whether regional
  processing improves economics
• Developing plastics processing model to compare
  alternatives, identify tradeoffs and key cost
  drivers
• Questions being addressed
• Which processing steps should be performed in
  decentralized versus central locations and across
  what geographic areas?
• What are the optimal processing sequences
  technology?
• How do processing economics vary as a function of
  incoming material form and quality outgoing
  purity?

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For more information on theStakeholder Dialogues

• www.electronicsrecycling.net/stakeholder
• Or
• contact Patty Dillon atdillon_at_seacoast.com