Blockchain Tech Tracks Plastics Recycling

Chemical giant BASF expanded a 2-year-old Canadian plastics recycling pilot from British Columbia to Alberta June 1, bringing Edmonton and Calgary into “reciChain,” a blockchain-based project to help recyclers correctly sort plastics, which can only be recycled with like products.

The move marks the latest step in a growing industry trend in which big-name manufacturing firms look to blockchain technology to track and document recycling programs and get a hand on the ever-growing pile of unrecycled plastics.

Fujitsu, for example, launched a project in July aimed at fiber-reinforced polymers used in aircraft and electric vehicles with Tokyo-based Teijin. That same month, PepsiCo announced a series of six sustainability projects in Europe, including one with Security Matters to track and verify recycling claims. Netherlands-based Circularise is working on pilots with Mitsubishi and Porsche, enabling them to trace plastics used and prove they’ve reached sustainability goals.

While helping companies track and verify the plastic waste they produce — which has a distinct marketing component — is a part of these programs, they have a distinctly more useful component. By using various tracking markers inserted in the products at the manufacturing stage and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, individual items can be tracked on an immutable blockchain, in much the same way that companies like Walmart, Nestlé and Dole are tracing produce from farm to table.

See also: What’s a Permissioned Blockchain and How Does Centralized Decentralization Work?

Beyond Green Credentials

In plastics, that can play a much more important role. Different plastic resins cannot be recycled together if they are to be melted and reformed into new things, which is the endgame of most recycling programs: to make it economically viable as well as possible to do more than reduce and reuse.

BASF’s reciChain began with a successful pilot in Brazil before moving to Canada, where the government says just 9% of plastics are recycled. But by tracking each item — for example a soda bottle — the tracking tools can be used when plastics are sorted at the recycling facility to make sure they are accurately sorted, as some types of plastic are very difficult if not effectively impossible to recycle. That sorting is one of the most difficult parts of plastic recycling.

Both reciChain and PepsiCo are using a blockchain-powered recycling conveyor Security Matters developed in July 2021, aimed at allowing the industry to create what it refers to as “closed loops” in which plastic are fully recycled multiple times. Using chemical markers that can be placed when the virgin plastic is manufactured, as well as at recycling and sorting facilities, the company can identify not only the type of polymer for sorting, it can identify the number of times a polymer has been recycled, the percentage of recycled content, and the name of the brand owner, according to an announcement.

ReciChain’s process has two parts. The tracers that can track plastics’ lifecycle “from pellet to pellet” in the manufacturing-recycling-manufacturing process, and a blockchain-based marketplace that BASF said provides “a secure, auditable transfer-of-ownership” as well as connecting with incentives for participants.

As for Circularise, the company noted that there is more to its tracking of plastics than just sustainability. It enables firms to verify that the plastic items they receive — such as auto parts — are accurately identified as well as correct for the part in question.

“We need to know more details on the parts and materials being used in our products,” said Porsche Project Lead for Innovation Research Antoon Versteeg. “That means information on production processes deep down the supply chain, statements of recycled content and more. …[We] were able to trace — for a number of specific cases — plastics from raw material production to the final car.”

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