Circularity in Practice: Review of Main Current Approaches and Strategic Propositions for an Efficient Circular Economy of Materials

This paper aims to summarize, propose, and discuss existing or emerging strategies to shift towards a circular economy of materials. To clarify the landscape of existing circular practices, a new spectrum is proposed, from product-based strategies, where entire products go through several life cycles without being reprocessed, to material-based...

Mapping the flat glass value-chain: a material flow analysis and energy balance of UK production

Glass is one of the UK’s eight energy-intensive industries. As such, it is under scrutiny to decouple growth in production from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recycled glass, also known as cullet, requires less energy to melt than primary raw materials in new glass production. The use of cullet thus reduces the energy intensity per unit of...

An innovative route to circular rigid plastics

An innovative route for plastics recycling is proposed, based on a combination of a logarithmic sorting process and colour plus high-resolution near-infrared (NIR) sensors. Although counterintuitive, it is shown that such a technology could sort clean flakes from rigid packaging waste into a very large number of different plastic grades with...