Michelin-Led Consortium to Boost Plastics Recycling

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): A consortium of European organizations led by tyremaker Michelin has launched a new project that aims to develop a circular economy for plastic products. The WhiteCycle project converts complex materials containing textiles made of plastic into various value-added products. The program is being con-financed by the Horizon Europe program under the European Commission.

The project targets to achieve annual recycling of more than two million tons of PET fibres from complex waste extracted from end-of-life products by 2030. The end-of-life products to be processed include tyres, hoses and multi-layer clothes. The €9.6 million public/private partnership WhiteCycle project will run for a period of four years.

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The consortium will develop new sorting technologies so as to enable a significant increase in the PET plastic content of complex waste streams. In addition to introducing new sustainable process for decomposing PET plastic content into pure monomers, it will also develop the repolymerization of the recycled monomers into new plastic and fibres.

The innovative project is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 2 million tons and avoid the landfilling or incineration of more than 1.8 million tonnes of plastic every year.