Arkema has signed an agreement to participate in the French state-backed Reverplast project, alongside four other companies. Reverplast forms part of new measures launched by the French government to assist companies in their approach to the circular economy based on committing to green growth. In a statement, Arkema said that given the growing scarcity of raw materials, the circular economy goes well beyond mere recycling; it also has to contribute to securing supply to fast growing markets and to minimizing extraction at source.

The collaboration plans to introduce recycled materials, specifically Arkema’s Altuglas PMMA, into the manufacture of thermoplastics for the automotive, boat building and wind power markets. A feature of PMMA, and one unique for a polymer, is that it can be regenerated into its original monomer and reintroduced into the resins production process.

The Reverplast project aims to create an end-of-life recovery stream for PMMA to obtain new resins which will then be used to make thermoplastic composite materials, themselves recyclable. These new resins will replace the thermoset resins currently used, which are not cannot be recycled.

Other partners in Reverplast are Canoe, a scale-up technology platform; Paprec, a plastics recycling specialist; Indra, a leader in recycling end-of-life vehicles and Plastinov, a specialist in processing composite materials for the wind energy market.