Recycling plastics is essential for sustainable waste management, but global recycling rates remain low, at just 9%. This presentation examines recent technological advances in the sorting, depolymerization and processing of plastics, aimed at improving the efficiency and sustainability of recycling. Advanced sorting technologies use infrared spectroscopy and image recognition to efficiently separate plastics and reduce contamination. Depolymerization breaks down plastics into monomers, allowing near-infinite recycling with recovery rates of 90% for materials like PET. Innovations in extrusion and injection molding produce high-quality recycled materials. These technologies have led to significant increases in recycling rates in Europe and Japan, creating a more environmentally friendly and circular plastics management system, and thus contributing to waste reduction and environmental protection. The presentation will also cover case studies illustrating the application of these technologies in various regions, challenges faced and solutions implemented, as well as future prospects for global adoption of these innovations. Discussions on policies and initiatives supporting these technologies, as well as partnerships between the public and private sectors, will also be covered to provide a comprehensive overview of the evolution of plastics recycling.

Dr. Hind Abdellaoui is currently a Senior research scientist and R&D Consultant.  She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the National Superior School of Electricity and Mechanics, Hassan II University, Casablanca, Morocco (2015). Her work has been awarded twice: prize for excellence in Mechanical Engineering at ENSEM (2015), and the 2nd is a prize for best thesis at the CMEEE conference, 2015. Dr. Abdellaoui joined the Institute of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Moroccan Foundation for Advanced Science Innovation and Research (MAScIR), Rabat as a scientific collaborator (2014). Between 2016 and 2020, Dr. Abdellaoui worked as a permanent professor of Composite materials, Material Sciences, Mechanics and Structure Analysis in Engineering school in Rabat, Morocco. In 2020, she joined the University Mohamed VI Polytech (UM6P), Benguerir as a post-doctoral fellow in the field of Nanocellulose Extraction as well as working on the process scalability from laboratory to pilot scale and moving through different entrepreneurship steps. Dr. Abdellaoui’s contributions appeared in almost thirty publications of articles and book chapters, and a dozen contributed national and international conference papers and she’s editing several edited books with Springer and Elsevier and CRC Press. Dr. Abdellaoui was a keynote speaker at the 1st International Symposium on Composite and Nanocomposite Materials: ISymposite I, Rabat, April 8-9, 2019.Also a distinguished speaker in in the International Symposium on Advanced Manufacturing for Polymeric materials, KMUTNB university, Thailand (42th May 2024).