Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

The production of plastics releases 33 million tons* of CO2 in Germany every year. At the same time, around 6.3 million tons of waste containing plastics are produced in Germany every year, 53% of which is thermally recycled and 47% of which is recycled. This has a dramatic impact on our environment. In the Fraunhofer lighthouse project “Waste4Future”, eight Fraunhofer Institutes have pooled their expertise and developed new solutions for waste management and the circular economy of plastics. With their expertise, they have significantly improved aspects such as recycling methods, purification, sorting, recipe development and processing methods for high-quality recyclates and opened up new recycling paths. In particular, the solutions developed in the project make it possible to use waste containing plastic that was previously incinerated.

Today's waste can thus become tomorrow's green resource. The new approaches contribute to the reduction of waste streams and also reduce the industry's dependence on imported primary carbon resources such as crude oil and natural gas.

The solutions are presented on this website.

*from an estimate based on internal data