Plastic recycling

Marco Thull | 14. November 2019

What do you do with old plastic energy chains?!

Plastic recycling programme for energy chains

In most factories, the usual procedure is to remove energy chains from the machines and throw them into industrial waste skips. Often the plastics are subsequently incinerated. Recycling of the chains rarely occurs, as the cost of separating the different materials in a product and recycling them to make usable granulate, is too high.

As part of the “igus Green Chainge Recycling Programme” users can send their plastic chains to igus for recycling regardless of the manufacturer.

The aim of the programme is to recycle the plastic from energy chains and reuse it for new products. According to material type, the plastics are sorted, cleaned, shredded and packed. They could then be reused for production.

If you would like to find out more, the steps are explained again at https://recycling.igus.eu/.

Important information: In Germany, only 16% of plastic waste is currently recycled. Globally, the figure is even lower. Most of it is burned or shipped abroad: only about 16% of the plastic waste produced in Germany is reused for new products (Plastikatlas 2019). The EU is also working on new rules governing the use of recycled plastic, aiming at a 25% recycling rate for plastic processing by 2025.