Hurdles Remain to Overcome

The struggling economy of the last several months may have slowed the momentum of recycling automotive plastics in North America, but panelists at the Plastics Roundtable of the 2009 Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) Commodities Roundtable Forum said there were still long-term factors working in favor of increased activity in that sector.

Panelist Sassan Tarahomi, a material engineering manager with International Automotive Components, Dearborn, Mich., provided an overview of the current use of recycled-content resins in the automotive sector.

Tarahomi said the list of recycled-content resins now accepted by auto manufacturers has grown throughout the decade and that numerous types of components in the exterior, interior and beneath the hood of vehicles are manufactured using recycled-content resins.

The components are made from a range of resin types, including polypropylene, nylon, polyethylene and thermoplastic olefin resins. Resins are matched with the component or application depending on properties such as temperature ductility, impact resistance and scratch resistance.

While marketers may be attracted to the notion that “green” is “in,” engineers were typically not as swayed by that notion, Tarahomi said. His advice for recyclers and compounders who have developed a recycled-content resin or product was that automotive engineers want to know about its properties first and foremost. Only after that discussion has been held is it time to mention that it’s a recycled-content resin, he commented.

Tarahomi said that with its end-of-life vehicle recycling mandates, Europe remained ahead of the U.S. in terms of recycled-content plastic components, though what has been learned in there could be applied to the North American market.

The high cost of oil, in terms of both the “light-weighting” of vehicles and the desire to recapture the petrochemicals in plastic scrap, is a factor that could abet automotive plastics recycling in the future, added Tarahomi.
Panelist David Raney of American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Torrance, Calif., offered remarks on the prospects for recycling plastics collected from the post-shredder residue stream.

He noted that barriers include identifying constituent plastics and removing unwelcome chemicals that are present in the residue stream. Raney indicated that technological progress has been made on these fronts, but performing both tasks cost-effectively on a high-volume basis remains a barrier.

Raney offered hope in the form of the mercury switch removal program that relies on cooperation from several parts of the supply chain. Studying the residue stream and how to best harvest it could benefit from a similar cooperation, he said.

Raney and Tarahomi, as well as moderator Ron Sherga of Sherresults LLC, Fort Worth, Texas, agreed that the wider plastics and chemical industry has demonstrated considerable willingness to research plastics recycling, but that it also points to cost-effectiveness, logistics and supply limitation issues as challenges that cannot be ignored.
The 2009 ISRI Commodities Roundtable Forum was held Sept. 15-17 in Chicago.

(Additional news about plastics recycling markets is available online at www.RecyclingToday.com.)