A total of eight Austrian companies have, with the involvement of the network Business Upper Austria (Linz; www.biz-up.at), set themselves the target to advance the recycling of polyolefins from household waste. For this, the partners in the “Circumat” project – including Borealis, Erema, Lindner and Greiner Packaging as well as the University of Linz – are starting off with the aspect of material quality, which they want to improve through the development of a recycling process. “It is important to show that we can produce recyclate of high quality. And this can, in turn, be used for the manufacture of high-quality products,” says Christoph Burgstaller, the head of the project and managing director of the polymer technology research institute, Transfercenter für Kunststofftechnik (Wels / Austria; www.tckt.at).

The objective of this process is to produce technical packaging such as bottles and crates, as well as consumer products. “This process will then serve as a basis for further product developments from recyclate material,” says Burgstaller. At the end of it all, the project partners want to make the results available to the whole plastics sector, which should be in March 2020.