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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRIBOSORT (Robust recycling technology that separates different plastic types from a mix of plastic waste to produce a plastic material directly marketable to manufacturers)

Teaser

Summary

In 2016, 335 million (M) tons of plastics were produced worldwide, while only 8.4 Mtons were collected in the EU for recycling. End of Life Vehicles (ELV) generates 7-8M tons/year of waste in the EU and Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) will be >12M tons/year by 2020. Today, companies producing these wastes have 2 options to discharge them: landfill disposal or sending them to Asia (mainly China until end 2017). Both options are expensive and have strong negative environmental impact. Besides, landfills disposal will soon be banned in Europe and China has recently closed its borders to plastic waste imports, causing plastic waste to pile up at disposal sites in Europe.
Additionally, plastic parts manufacturers face pressure from customers to reduce costs. Meanwhile, virgin plastics price is dependent on oil prices, rising irregularly.
Tribosort is a disruptive technology capable of sorting ELV and WEEE plastic mixtures producing recycled plastic with 95% purity or more. Our final products maintain the properties of virgin plastics at a lower cost and give a second life to waste.

Work performed

During our Feasibility Study we addressed:
- Tribosort technical viability, with the needed technical specifications and development, industrialization and validation plan. A preliminary Work Plan and time frame were proposed, with its risk assessment.
- Tribosort commercial viability, elaborating an operations-plan, guaranteeing Freedom to Operate. The dissemination plan for our technology was defined. We evaluated the regulations and certifications affecting operability.
- We prepared a Business Plan, based on market trends, size and segmentation. We identified our end-users, competitors and selected the types of plastics to be recycled with our process. We defined the team for the project as well as 5-year sales projections, evaluating the impact on the company in terms of employment and ROI.
- Our people resource plan as well as subcontractors to carry out specific tasks of the work plan.

Final results

Tribosort will be the only technology capable of separating mixed heavy plastics from ELV and WEEE and produce premium marketable plastics.
We will provide the plastics market with new ranges of raw materials and a way to get rid of major sources of industrial plastic waste in the EU. We expect to be the key to circular economy in the plastics industry creating a turnover of 33Mâ‚¬ by the 3rd year of commercialization and boosting employment in the EU with 77 new positions.