Design for Closed Loop Recycling of Housing Plastics

In response to increasing material prices and consumer awareness, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) strive to reduce resource consumption and to lower the environmental load of their products. One of the particular technical challenges that recycling companies and OEMs of electronic products face is closing material loops for plastic housings, which is impeded by the increasing presence of additives, such as flame retardants (FRs). Performed analyses indicate that the reliability of plastic identification techniques requires further improvement and that identification and product disassembly make up 35% and 20% respectively of the processing costs for closed loop plastic recycling of LCD TVs. To facilitate and increase the reliability of plastic identification, the incorporation of a knowledge based decision tree in the software of plastic analyzers is proposed. In addition, novel fasteners, which can be simultaneously disassembled by the application of an external trigger and have the potential to substantially lower the disassembly costs, are presented.status: accepte