Plastic Recycling - "Put a square peg through a round hole"
 We are rapidly replacing steel, glass, wood and other materials with plastics (with increasing tendency) and Europe alone already produces 50 million tons annually. Yet whilst our landfills reach their limits, we still bury and incinerate 80% of collected plastic waste. According to the APME survey the recycling levels lay below 10% oft the produced plastics volume and after all there are still 280 million tons plastics in circulation from the last 14 years from 1993 to 2006.
All resources on earth are limited and control over energy, water and waste guaranties future profits based on the dependence of countries, their citizens and governments. Oil prices raised to unknown high levels and despite high recycling quotas of the EU Commission exports of low grade plastics to the Far East increase versus regional recycling, when the Basle Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (valid also for plastic waste) has been adopted in 1993.
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Where do the huge amounts of plastic disappear to?
... or „The last one out cleans up Earth!“
Germany is very environmentally conscious and an ideal country to become rich through waste. The annual waste volume is estimated at 25 million tons with an approximate turn-over of 40 billion Euros and experts estimate that approximately 7 million tons are illegally land-filled in former mines and opencast pits.
 Despite of protective measures the German bay belongs to the most waste polluted regions of the North Sea according to marine biologists of the University of Kiel. More than 180 dead birds, collected along the German coastline have been examined during a study conducted since 2002 and nearly all (93%) had plastic waste in their stomach.
Oceana estimates that every hour, 675 tons of waste are directly disposed into the sea worldwide, half of which is plastics. Because not every plastic floats, it is assumed that 70% sinks to the ground.
In the Pacific Ocean already exists a “Trash Vortex“ with an estimated size of 1.400.000 km2, approximately four times the size of Germany (357.092 km2). The mass is estimated at approximately 100 million tons. Annimation: Greenpeace
In the sea plastic parts are gradually finely ground to powder by solar radiation and wave motion. If the powder is fine enough, it will be even taken up by plankton and can move up the food chain. The sand of the beach of Plymouth contains of 5-10% plastic according to Thompson.
Wire burning city Guiyu, China.
© Basel Action Network 2008
70% of all computers, TVs, cell phones and other electronic waste are exported to China for recycling. Additionally thousands of tons of toxic electronic waste from Europe and USA are - often illegally - shipped to countries like Ghana in order to recycle metals at lowest cost. Remaining plastic cables and housings are either burned or dumped and become a problem for the environment.
CreaCycle GmbH was founded in 2002, in order to develop CreaSolv® Recycling Processes in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institut IVV, which allow the re-use of the recaptured plastics in their former applications, and the removal of additives and their dangerous degradation products.
But if one recognizes the afore-mentioned disaster scenario, it becomes obvious that we may be too late and plastics, despite having only been in use for approximately 50 years, has already severely and irreversibly contaminated our oceans and beaches.
It is high time to do something!
We will continue to produce more and more mobile phones, computers and electronic devices, which we constantly seek to upgrade as technology improves faster and faster, in our quest to become contactable everywhere and always up-to-date. For such progress we need new recycling technologies, if we don’t want to end up eating our own plastic waste.
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Introduction