Plastic Pipes Conference Association # 2023 Lake Buena Vista
Robin Bresser, Ilari Aho, Shima Holder, Tijana Duric, Kaisa Suvilampi
Through innovation and experience, PEX pipe solutions have been enabling comfortable heating and safe plumbing with a successful 50-year track record. They are an important facilitator of the green energy transition and the ambitious climate targets of, for example, the European Union (EU) Green Deal by enabling energy efficient plumbing and heating solutions. Furthermore, crosslinking increases temperature resistance, mechanical robustness and resilience to environmental influences and thereby ensures a long and trouble-free life span. To enable true circularity, however, closing the loop with production and construction-site wastes, as well as, in future end-of-life demolition waste needs to be addressed. Sustainability principles for circularity are based on the waste hierarchy(1) of firstly reduction and reuse, secondly mechanical recycling and thirdly, advanced (chemical) recycling. The reduction and reuse for PEX has been maximized through the crosslinking of the pipes which optimizes wall thickness (reduce) as well as lifetime (reuse). Mechanical recycling is the first recycling option, but its recyclate use is limited to certain down-cycled applications. Advanced (chemical) recycling can close the loop with non-mechanically recycled PEX waste to produce a high quality, drinking water safe PEX pipe system with the same quality as virgin plastic.
In practice, this third waste hierarchy option of advanced (chemical) recycling requires close co-operation and co-ordination along the whole value chain. This paper explores how four experienced companies have worked together to successfully recycle PE-X waste pipes back into high quality PEX pipe systems. The learnings of this circularity project are presented in order to stimulate transparency and constructive discussion on the environmental benefits of closing the loop for PEX pipes. While the initial pilot project used small diameter (17 x 2.0 mm) production scrap, broadening the pool to job-site waste, and finally including pipes at the end of their life will continue to be an exciting subject where value chain cooperation is essential and strong complementary synergies for the green transition of the construction sector can be achieved.
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