First Scientific Tests Prove HDPE’S Recycling Properties

ESE World has carried out the first practical experiment to demonstrate that HDPE can be recycled at least 10 times and further processed under controlled conditions.

The company has been the leader in the use of recycled plastics for the manufacture of containers for waste and recyclables for over 30 years. Its advanced procedures and processes in the cleaning, additives and processing of the material enables ESE to make products from recycled plastics with the same quality as virgin material.

However, one question that has remained unanswered until now was how often HDPE can be processed, ground and reprocessed in injection moulding procedures without fundamentally changing the structure and characteristics of the material.

ESE therefore established a controlled experimental model at its production facility that enabled virgin HDPE to be reused 10 times. After each step the material was analysed in cooperation with external research institutions using state-of-the-art methods. The project was led by ESE’s plastics specialist and scientist Jeanett Köhn, PhD.

The test demonstrated for the first time that the injection moulding process and shredding of the plastics have, in principle, no property-altering effects on the material over this entire period of reuse.  With the service life of containers being around 10 to 20 years, this result means that the availability of material for sustainable production from the same recycled plastic is secured for at least 100 to 200 years.

Udo Fröhlingsdorf, Director of Product Development & Marketing at ESE, is very pleased with the test results. “Decades of developments under production conditions have put us in the position to process and treat recycled material in such a way that the quality of the products is on a par with virgin material. The findings of this series of experiments now allow us to engage in more targeted research and to develop further future-oriented methods.”