ENACTUS JEMTEC | CASE STUDY CODE: ENTCJTC02

Recycling the greatest foe of nature

Introduction
As the Ecuadorian society grows in population and economy, there needs also increase, thus giving
rise to waste generation. An increasing stream of waste being disposed of in landfills has quickly
become a significant problem for the country. According to the National Institute of Statistics and
Censuses (INEC) in 2016, almost 13 thousand tons of solid waste were collected daily, of which
90.3% were collected in an unsorted manner and 9.7% in a sorted manner. Also, the increasing
extraction of natural resources to support economic growth has made an impact on the
environmental and social sustainability of the supply networks. The scarcity of resources will
increase in the future and the ability to recover and manage these resources will become essential
for a sustainable local economy.
In a recent research it was classified that the amounts of waste produced per household in the city
of Guayaquil was a total of 0.61 kg per person daily, from which almost 76% is organic, 8% plastic,
6% paper and cardboard, 6% for glass and dust and 4% of metal and others. Considering a total of
2.291 million people for the city in the year 2010, according to the last Census performed by INEC,
almost 1780 tons of solid waste is generated every day. This represents approximately 41% of the
total waste collected by the municipality.

Plastic waste has been put under scrutiny; due to, its generation has been constantly increasing over
the last decades. Nowadays, the production of plastic has reached about 350 million tons per year
worldwide (Heidbreder and Bablok, 2019). There is growing evidence that the current use and
disposal of plastic leads to substantial pollution of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, having a
tremendous effect on various aspects including wildlife, through diverse routes. These impacts are
especially noticeable for single-use plastics, such as expanded polystyrene (EPS) which represents
6.26% of all the plastic waste in the country.

EPS is an excellent material for packaging and construction, because of its light weight, rigidity,
highly desirable insulation properties and shock resistance. On the other hand, polystyrene is very
stable and extremely hard to degrade in the environment after disposal. One study on life cycle
analysis concludes that to produce 1.716 g of EPS, 87.47 mg of CO2 are released in the atmosphere.

The city hall of Guayaquil, aims to regulate the manufacture, trade (of any type), distribution and
delivery of single-use plastics. Within this ordinance, the manufacturers of single-use EPS items must
change the formula in their process, to a new formula or product agreeing with any of the following
options: 1) products are 100% biodegradable, 2) 70% of total product mass comes from recycled
materials and 3) using other reusable materials in the lapse of 30 months (Ecuador. Autonomous
Decentralized Government Municipality of Guayaquil, 2018). In concordance with the local
ordinance are international regulations that the country needs to accomplish. For example, in July
2019, the Associated States of the Pacific Alliance, from which Ecuador is a new member, referred to
the importance of developing new policies to promote the integral management of waste and
reducing the production of single-use plastics (Ecuador. Autonomous Decentralized Government
Municipality of Guayaquil, 2019).

Importantly, Guayaquil is the city with highest plastic manufacturing, according to the Ecuadorian
Plastic Association (ASEPLAS), 64% of the 600 companies nationwide are located in this area and this
single industry generates more than 19,000 direct and 120,000 indirect jobs (Magazine, 2008).
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Furthermore, nationwide EPS container manufacturers do not comply with any of the three choices
the city hall ordinance has set as acceptable. This is the main reason why EPS item producer´s
opinion is that the local ordinance could harm the industry in its production processes and risk the
stability of many workers.
Thus, the following question arises: what strategy should plastic manufacturing companies follow to
survive in this new local eco-friendly environment?

One contributing solution is shifting from a linear economy to a circular economy in single-use items
production by means of reusing and recycling expanded polystyrene products. Manufacturers
already reuse their scrap as part of their production process (between 30 to 40%), so if they add
post-consumer resin as raw material, they could achieve the 70% recycled material objective set by
the municipality.
This study focuses on giving feasible options to the single-use plastic manufacturers to redesign their
products, so they can increase the use of recycled (post-consume) material; applying the concept of
circular economy to strengthen their competitiveness and supporting resource sustainability.

Proposed circular economy EPS production cycle

In a circular economy, resources are kept in use for as long as possible, extracting the maximum
value from them whilst in use, then recovering and regenerating products and materials at the end
of each service life. The circular economy concept provides a key opportunity to address the
challenge of resource scarcity for both policy makers and industries. Companies are urged to play
their part and integrate the circular economy in their business.

Nowadays, single-use expanded polystyrene manufacturing companies in Ecuador don´t recycle

post-consumption plastic for their production process. In fact, they reprocess the scrap material left
from the molding and cutting of the plastic products and other forms to process post-industrial
resin, applying the reuse of the 3R´s of circular economy inside the boundaries of the company.
After, the post-industrial and virgin resin are mixed to create new EPS products. However, this
doesn't mean that less EPS waste is being buried in local landfills. As shown in the previous section,
almost 92% of all waste is buried and between 6 to 8% is recycled. Fig. 1 shows the proposed circular
economy model for EPS waste in dashed red lines. The landfill is removed in this model by
attempting to reprocess the post-consumer waste.
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Fig. 1. Proposed circular economy cycle

Methodology for recycling of EPS

Individual collection
In the current way to recycle waste, household owners leave their waste bags outside their homes in
the set garbage truck schedule. Afterwards, individual collectors check the waste and separate all
that they think has value. In order to recycle EPS waste, first household owners must be
conscientized on the separation of their residues inside their homes.
Secondly, monetary value must be given to EPS residues by waste recycle companies and/or
resellers to make individual collectors also take that type of waste.

EPS waste resellers

The waste is then taken for storage and reselling. Such businesses already exist and operate in the
city, so EPS waste must be added to their structure.

Waste reprocesses
The collected EPS must be retransformed in resin pellets to be used in the manufacture of new
products. This process may be done by the plastic manufacturer or by a third party if it is
economically attractive.

Results
In order to achieve this proposed circular economy scenario, problems and constraints must be
alleviated first. One of them is precise data on the possibility of obtaining high quality EPS products
using recycled post-consumed products combined with the used “scrap” and “virgin” resin for the
manufacturing process. In this context, from June to August 2019, the authors collaborated with a
local plastic manufacturer in order to formalize the recycling of single-use expanded polystyrene
post-consume containers. The goal was to obtain at least 100 kg of the post-consumed recycled EPS.

For this purpose, one hundred volunteer students from two local universities participated in the
collection process, and a total amount of 230 kg was collected. After collection, the manufacturer
continued with the protocol agreed for the post-consume recycling process at their quarters. The
experiment formalization includes all the process starting from the arrival of post-consume EPS
waste where the authors helped with the collection through the production of recycled resin and
subsequent elaboration of new EPS containers.

Manufacturing of waste recycle resin pellets

Fig. 2 shows the recycling process of the post-consumer plastic waste until it becomes resin pellets
done by the manufacturing company. The first 4 steps were done in an artisanal manner by just one
operator. It started with the 1. prewashing of all waste using a hose with pressurized water to
remove any remains of organic matter impregnated to the waste. Continued with the 2.
selection/segregation of the waste, where the operator proceeded to divide the waste between the
colors of presentation and excluding any material that could not continue the process.

After came the 3. washing in a washing-machine where liquid detergent, degreaser and liquid
chlorine were added and after 4. drying at medium temperature. This process lasted around 45 min
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(25 min washing + 20 min drying) per cycle and even though the maximum capacity of the
washing-machine and dryer is 20 kg, only 600 g approximately could be introduced inside the
machines during each batch, because of the high volume (low density) of the waste. The washing
and drying of enough material took approximately 2 weeks to obtain almost 14 kg of dry waste.
After, it was transported to the reprocess area where the company transforms the scrap into resin as
previously stated. There, the waste followed three more steps: 5. grinding, 6. extrusion and 7.
pelletizing where waste was crushed into small fragments and granules in the grinder, then passed
to the extruder through heat and pressure until it dissolved and finally flew out of a small outlet and
solidified into a continuous thin line. The extruded plastic stream was then cut into pellets by a pellet
cutter with a rotation knife and cooled in a water bath at room temperature.

Fig. 2. Post-Consume EPS resin transformation process

Manufacturing of post-consume new EPS containers

Before the test, the company used 70% of virgin resin and 30% of scrap reprocessed/reused resin for
their process. Depending on the type of container built, they programmed the sheet extrusion
machine for a certain thickness of the sheet.
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For the experiment, the manufacturer decided to combine all three types of resin before entering
the EPS sheet extrusion line using the following mix as shown in Fig. 3:

● 40% Virgin Resin (18.0 kg)

● 30% Scrap Reprocess Resin/Reuse (13.5 kg)
● 30% Recycled Post-Consumer Resin (13.5 kg)

Fig. 3. Manufacturing of post-consume extruded sheet

The machine was already in operation with a previous batch when they entered the mix and set to
produce 2.2 mm plates. So, the first two rolls (see Fig. 3) were marked as transition, since they
contained the previous and new mix and the following two were marked as post-consume.

Total weight of transition rolls were 43.6 kg and the weight of the post-consume rolls were 21.6 kg,
giving a final weight of 65.2 kg. The transition roll occurred when shifting from the usual mix to the
new proposed mix, therefore there was 20.2 kg of extra EPS sheet. After this, the four rolls were
separated and stored for further use in a next session, given that all thermoforming machines were
busy at the time of the experiment, as shown in Fig. 3.
One week after the sheet rolls of expanded polystyrene were made, the manufacturer decided to
make 5 in. x 5 in. foam food containers as the trial run of the new process using the recycling resin.
They set the post-consume rolls in the machine and started running it. Some post-consume
containers were taken away for laboratory analysis with other previous ones in order to compare
properties.

Laboratory analysis tests

Based on the previous sections, five samples of each of the three type of final products were
collected for posterior analysis:
A. Regular mix EPS containers.
B. Reformulated mix EPS containers transition roll.
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C. Reformulated mix EPS containers post-consume roll.

All samples were weighed, and their resistance measured after 24 hours. Average values are shown
in Table 1. We consider the A containers as the base sample. The presence of recycled materials
seems to make the mixture more rigid in the transition sample. However, the analysis for the
transition was made only 2 hours after production, in a previous day, so that may be the reason for
the difference.

Table 1. Laboratory report for characteristics of normal, transition and post-consume recycled
containers.

Container description Average weight (g) Average resistance (kgf)

A. Normal 5.00 10.12

B. Transition 4.80 7.54

C. Post-consumer recycled 4.70 9.26

Also, microbiological analysis is necessary for these products to ensure quality through the
application of procedures to test the presence of microorganisms and compare them to
standardized limits. This becomes very important in the context of a circular economy, since
microorganisms present in the food industry as a microflora may penetrate EPS waste food
containers. The reprocess of new recycled resin pellets could lead to undesirable effects on public
health.

Nonetheless, laboratory analysis effectuated by the manufacturer showed no presence of

microorganisms in any of the samples. This can be explained because the extrusion process occurs at
a temperature higher than 200 °C for the recycled resin manufacture and almost 120 °C for the roll
production. Both processes add almost 18 min of total time and at these temperatures, no
microorganisms can survive.
Finally, containers or other expanded polystyrene elements can release particles that can be
absorbed by food. The certification of these products is done by the migration test. Plastic materials
and objects should not yield their components to food products in quantities exceeding 10 mg/dm2
or 60 mg/kg (limit of Global Migration by Ecuadorian Technical Standard NTE INEN-EN 1186-1).
For this experiment, migration test results, although being a little higher for recycled containers, still
showed much lower levels than the limits set by the Ecuadorian Technical Standard (Table 2).

Table 2. Migration test results.

Parameter Results Normal EPS Results Recycled EPS container

container (mg/dm2) (mg/dm2)

Global Migration Test (ISO Octane 4.3 4.6

Simulant)
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Global migration test (Simulant 0.8 1.6

Ethanol 10%)

Global Migration Test (Distilled Water 0.5 1.2

Simulant)

Global Migration Test (Acetic Acid 1.0 1.0

Simulant)

Conclusions and final remarks

Based on the literature and the country's actual recycle scheme; a circular economy model scenario
has been proposed. Unarguably, the benefits derived from the implementation of circular economy
are due to the reduction in the consumption of natural resources. However, the economic and
environmental benefits are not self-evident and need to be proven by an in-depth analysis such as
life cycle assessment of the current and proposed scenarios.
The primary aim of this research was to contribute to the private single-use plastic industry to
redesign their products using recycled materials. To attain this purpose, it was made clear that EPS
waste reprocess to form new resin pellets is possible and that mixing with virgin and reused pellets
can create high quality new products.
There is a great plastic waste problem, and it is an issue that must be considered. Most
post-consume EPS containers are discarded in landfills and pollute the environment. The rates of
waste recovery in Ecuador are very low, so it is of vital importance for policy making institutions to
increase the knowledge of circular economy and help them assess the feasibility of recycling EPS and
develop a supportive system that facilitates and encourages recycling activities among recyclable
waste collectors' associations.

Questions for research

● The municipality of the city of Guayaquil in the above study has targeted individual
households for collecting segregated EPS and paying them for it so that they can recycle it
later. In India, where do you still observe the prevalent use of PolyStyrene? How do you plan
to collect this harmful waste and segregate it to make it recyclable?
● In the case study, it proposes to recycle EPS (Expanded PolyStyrene) into resin pellets and
in-turn use the pellets to make recycled EPS sheets. Research and suggest more innovative
ways in which we can recycle/reuse/upcycle EPS to develop a profitable product out of it.
Devise a business plan for the same. (Try to incorporate the idea of ​Circular Economy​ in your
business plan)

● In the present scenario, 90% of the EPS manufactured is dumped after its use. Strategise a
way in which we can segregate the already dumped EPS to prevent it to further pollute
water streams and oceans.
ENACTUS JEMTEC | CASE STUDY CODE: ENTCJTC02