The European Standards Organisation (CEN/CENELEC) has circulated the final report of the NEN/BTWG11 working group into standards needs for sustainable chemicals for the Circular Economy. Challenges posed to recycling by additives in plastics (stabilisers, flame retardants, colourants) are underlined. Standards development recommendations include minimum quality (characteristics, contaminants …) for plastics and plastic granulates for recycling, thresholds of contaminants for End-of-Waste and methodology for calculating product recycled content. Research needs identified include: extraction approaches to remove unwanted substances from recycled plastics, sorting and detection systems for plastics, mechanical and chemical recycling of plastics, recovery of chemicals from plastics, research into how additives hamper plastics recycling and establishment at CEN/CENELEC of a mechanism to identify standards that exclude recycled materials.
CEN prEN 45557 proposal of 2017 submitted to final vote 28/12/2018 https://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:182:11962059414905 – draft texts available here https://www.eera-recyclers.com/files/cen-clc-tc10sec132dc-secr-enquiry-pren45557-recycled-material-content.pdf
CEN-CLC/BTWG 11 ‘Sustainable Chemicals’ https://www.cencenelec.eu/news/brief_news/Pages/TN-2018-023.aspx