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PLEXIGLAS® – Environment and Recycling

 
 

Responsible Care

As an innovative company with international oprations, we consider the protection of our environment to be an essential factor when it comes to safeguarding the future of our planet. That is why the sparing use of natural resources is just as obvious an element of our corporate policy as the development and manufacture of products that are safe and environment-friendly when employed in the correct quantities, or can be safely disposed of after use.

 

Recycling of PLEXIGLAS®

Owing to its properties, PLEXIGLAS® is primarily intended for the manufacture of durable, high-quality articles and less so for products meant to be consumed and disposed of within a short time. Thanks to its resistance to aging and weathering, PLEXIGLAS® remains fully functional even after many years of service, and does not need to be replaced at an early stage.

Given correct fabrication, PLEXIGLAS® releases no pollutant substances to the environment. Special grades of PLEXIGLAS® have long been successfully employed for intraocular and contact lenses, as well as implants.

At the end of its product life and after careful separation from other materials, PLEXIGLAS® can be used for energy recovery and chemical or mechanical recycling.

  • In thermal recycling - if correctly incinerated - it only gives rise to water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), i.e. no pollutant emissions. From this point of view, PLEXIGLAS® is even superior to fossil fuels, which contain sulfur etc.
  • Physical recycling means that extruded PLEXIGLAS® can be ground and repelletized after correct separation, and used once more for extrusion molding. Since the recycling process leaves the original properties of PLEXIGLAS® more or less intact, the products manufactured from recycled material are of the same high quality as the original ones.
  • Chemical recycling is a process in which PLEXIGLAS® is reduced to its original monomer unit of methyl methacrylate, from which new PLEXIGLAS® or methacrylate dispersions/emulsions, for example, are built.

Both chemical and physical recycling are ways of obtaining high-quality material again from a high-quality product.

 

Safety data sheets

on our products are available on request.