China's green breakthrough of PCR plastics: from certification traceability to technical breakthroughs

  Under the global environmental protection wave, post-consumer recycled plastics (PCR) are becoming the core competitiveness of China's manufacturing. The "Technical Specifications for the Use of Recycled Plastics in Household Appliances" (T/CHEAA 0034-2024), which will take effect in January 2025, requires that the proportion of PCR added to household appliances be up to 20%. This policy forces the industrial chain to upgrade. A modification factory in South China uses molecular-level purification technology and three-layer melt filtration to remove micron-level metal impurities in PCR, so that the transmittance of recycled polypropylene is increased to 92%, and the impact strength reaches 98% of the original material. Relying on the AI ​​visual sorting system, packaging companies in East China have increased the purity of PET bottle recycling to 99.2%, reducing raw material costs by 30%.

  The key to technological breakthroughs lies in breaking the performance bottleneck of recycled materials. The nano-calcium carbonate reinforcement system developed by a leading enterprise has enabled the flexural strength of PCR-ABS materials to exceed 65MPa, successfully replacing imported materials for high-end air conditioner shells8. What is more noteworthy is that GRS global recycling standard certification is becoming a market pass - companies that pass this certification need to build a full-link traceability system, match each batch of goods with a TC transaction certificate, and provide 12 types of certification documents such as raw material procurement, transportation, and recycler qualifications. A daily necessities factory in Ningbo has increased its export orders by 40% with its GRS-certified food-grade PCR-PET lunch boxes.

  The industry reshuffle has quietly taken place. A Dongguan injection molding factory suffered a loss of 3 million yuan due to the use of uncertified PCR materials, resulting in a product brittle cracking rate of over 15%; and Veolia Huafei, through the high-performance technology of marine plastics (OBP), jointly with the Chinese Academy of Sciences team, used molecular chain repair to increase the impact strength of recycled PET by 3 times, and combined with UL 2809 environmental certification to open up the high-end market4. With the GB/T 16288 standard requiring the labeling of recycled content on products, the green transformation of China's plastics industry is shifting from passive compliance to technology dividend-driven.