Page 41 - Plastics News November 2025
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FEATURE NEWS
cycled PET (rPET) are showing how recycling or syngas. What used to be termed as waste is
can be used to make a profit as well as reduce now able to run vehicles or is used in electrical
carbon emissions, and this is one measure that plants, making a liability an asset.
other polymer industries must emulate.
Transforming plastics into fuels is also asso-
The Role of AI in Plastic Recycling Plants ciated with a more complex way of managing
With the increasing complexity of recycling plastic waste, as well as a way of providing a
plants, the application of AI in plastic recycling solution to the issue between waste minimiza-
plants is rapidly increasing. The use of Artificial tion and energy sustainability. Several start-ups
Intelligence systems has become extremely ac- across the globe are developing scalable op-
curate in identifying, sorting, and separating tions that combine sophisticated technologies in
various polymers. By analyzing the images and plastic recycling with renewable energy to make
sorting of plastics with the help of a sensor, AI the process closed-loop and low-emission.
enhances the efficiency of mechanical recycling The sustainability benefit is evident here; instead
or chemical recycling of plastics. of letting the plastics rot in the garbage dumps,
industries can use the hidden energy content.
Machine learning-trained smart robots will be
able to recognize contaminants and have lower This is in line with the fact that chemical recycling
waste rejection rates. AI-driven predictive analyt- enhances sustainability, which has two advan-
ics is also useful in enabling operators to predict tages of reducing waste and generating energy.
plant performance, optimize power consump- Sustainable Polymer Innovation and Biode-
tion, and reduce the cost of operation. With the gradable Plastic Materials
increasing level of automation, the use of AI in
plastic recycling plants will keep transforming in- Recycling is critical, but the realistic aspect of the
novations in the recycling industry in guarantee- upstream establishment of sustainable polymer
ing the accuracy and scalability. innovation and biodegradable plastic materials is
also transformative. Innovative technologies are
The future of plastic production is AI-driven helping to reduce plastic waste to be reduced in
plants, which are environmentally friendly due the creation of polymers that decompose natu-
to the data-driven system, which can develop rally or can be reprocessed easily.
a more sustainable method of producing plas-
tics, such as the collection and transformation of As an example, polymers derived from vegeta-
plastic to the end result. ble sources, such as PLA and PHA, are becoming
sources of concern as a substitute for conven-
Plastic-to-Fuel Conversion: Waste to Energy tional plastics. These biodegradable plastics can
be put through composting and industrial recy-
Among the most interesting inventions, the
transformation of plastics into fuels should be cling systems, and thus, technology and nature
mentioned as this is one of the areas in which the can go hand in hand. The introduction of these
development is accelerating. This is by pyrolysis materials in global manufacturing is an encour-
or gasification to convert the plastics, which are aging move to the future of the plastics manu-
not recyclable, into useful fuels such as diesel facturing process, which is eco-friendly and sus-
tainable production and packaging can co-exist.
November 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 41
