Recycling of plastics

There are several processes for converting plastic waste into raw materials: mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, biological recycling, and thermolysis or thermal decomposition/dissociation (by heat). The European regulation on packaging and packaging waste (PPWR, EU 2025/40), applicable since August 2026, imposes mandatory recycled content rates from 2030 onwards. Ahead of this deadline, securing the quality and performance of recyclates today is becoming a strategic issue for manufacturers, recyclers, and compounders.

Materia Nova offers its expertise to:

• Identify the nature and quantity of the different materials making up batches of waste obtained through mechanical recycling, characterize them to establish relationships between the composition and properties of the batches, test the behavior of commercial additives to restore the required properties and determine the right dosage, and reformulate them to match customer specifications — a complete diagnostic before any commitment to industrial production.
• Improve the properties of recycled plastics (PLA, PO, PU, etc.) to give them superior mechanical properties (mechanical strength, impact and tensile resistance, flow, …),
• Improve mechanical plastics recycling by proposing protocols (grinding of material to be recycled, drying of material before extrusion, extrusion, MFI evaluation, etc.) to preserve product properties after passing through the extruder,
• Convert waste into filament for additive manufacturing, thanks to its prototyping line supported by the necessary peripherals (dryers, grinders), enabling the development of prototype formulations tailored to customer specifications and applications.
• Modify the chemical structure of plastic waste by converting it into shorter molecules ready to be used in new chemical reactions.

Our strengths:

• Expertise in polymer formulation, chemical modification, and chemical synthesis.
• Complete laboratory for polymer processing and shaping (extruders, internal mixers, injection molding machines, grinders, filament production, …).
• State-of-the-art equipment fleet for chemical, physicochemical and biological, mechanical, thermal, thermomechanical, physicochemical, and morphological characterization.
• Expertise in plasma oil polymerization, carbon valorization, functional coatings.
• We develop and optimize pyrolysis / thermolysis processes.
• Plasma reforming of flue gas into synthons, avoiding combustion where possible.