Statement by Dr. Thomas Hillebrand, Managing Director of PDR Recycling

The pandemic has accelerated the current shortage of raw materials in the construction industry, but it is not the cause. With the new global power China and the emerging economies, competition for limited resources will become increasingly fierce.

Now, at the latest, it is clear that "business as usual" is not an option. We must use resources more efficiently, otherwise the lack of raw materials will become a limiting factor. To achieve this, we need to reduce the amount of materials used in products and packaging. The service life of products must increase again. And last but not least, recycling must ensure that materials can be used several times.

It is not enough to appeal to companies and end consumers to use existing recycling systems more intensively and carefully. This is important, of course, but the rethink is much more comprehensive. Recycling must be taken into account as early as the product development stage. Manufacturers should bring recycling specialists on board to ensure that the subsequent separation of raw materials is taken into account right from the development stage.

The task of recycling companies is to develop cost-effective recycling solutions and find efficient ways to recover used products from the market. The more fragmented the waste, the greater the challenge in terms of logistics. This means that manufacturers in the same sector need to join forces to develop a recycling solution together. This is the only way to collect quantities that are attractive for reuse. Think of sealants used in construction, for example.

But all this is of little use if the recovered raw materials do not find their way back into production. Manufacturers need to be willing to adapt their production processes to the use of recyclates and be flexible enough to compensate for minor fluctuations in recyclate quality without any loss of product quality.

In general, it will be necessary to change attitudes towards recycled raw materials. The old way of thinking often still applies here, namely that recycled materials must not only have exactly the same quality characteristics as fresh raw materials, but should also be at least 20 percent cheaper.

Fortunately, there are first signs that the mindset is slowly changing. I can report from the practice of a recycling specialist for small-scale hazardous waste that sustainability managers have been contacting us much more frequently recently. In the past, it was always the purchasers who just wanted to see if they could reduce costs with recyclates.