Sustainability @BASF: Leveraging Chemistry for the Recycling of "Un-recycable" Plastics

Join us for an insightful virtual lecture by Bernhard von Vacano, Vice President of Plastics Circularity Research, about the recycling of "un-recyclable" plastics. Plastics recycling today is mostly discussed and implemented at scale for packaging. While there is still a lot of improvement, in other sectors recycling today seems impossible:

For polyurethane foam mattresses, synthetic fibers in textiles, or polyamide engineering plastics in cars, reinforced with glass fibers. In all cases, mechanical recycling by remelting and reshaping the materials is either not possible due to chemical cross-links or the intrinsic mixture with other materials. Here, dissolution-based or chemical recycling can help: Selectively dissolving polymers, or reversing the polymerization reaction to go back to the monomers, and using the toolbox of chemical purification techniques to create true circularity for materials not addressed so far.

Following the lecture, there will be an opportunity for discussion. We look forward to seeing you virtually!