No plastics should be left behind in the recycling process. Yet, black plastic packaging used for items such as coffee cup lids, pots and food trays often end up as residue in landfill or are incinerated. Why? Sorting systems used in the plastics recycling process do not easily detect the colour black.
Up to 6 to 10 million tons of polymers are coloured with carbon black for the packaging industry. Polymers are generally sorted by detectors with Near-Infrared (NIR) technology. Proper sorting is possible if the energy received by the plastic can be reflected.
Clariant has developed an additive that makes dark-coloured plastics detectable by NIR sensors used in automated polymer sorting systems.
The new product range is part of Clariant’s ‘Design for Recycling’ programme. Recognising that recycling is the foundation of a circular economy, Clariant is mobilising significant resources across the packaging value chain to ensure that an ever-higher percentage of plastic packaging is recycled.
Associated SDGs
