Potential
Plastic pipes are used for a wide variety of purposes, be it for drinking water, heating, heat pumps, cable protection, waste water or gas. They are valued for their durability, safety and high quality.
Considerable potential
Pipes that are installed today have an expected service life of up to 100 years. Almost 85,000 tons of plastic pipes are produced and installed in Switzerland every year. Around 25 percent of these are already made from recycled plastics. The recycled material currently comes mainly from packaging and is used in cable conduits. In the future, more and more packaging will be made from such packaging. It is therefore all the more important that more pipes are collected for recycling so that new pipes can be made from them.
Circular economy Pipes
The manufacturers of plastic pipes are working on enabling the use of recycled plastics in other applications as well. However, due to safety and health considerations, recycled plastics are not yet possible in the gas, heating and drinking water sectors.
Cuttings from installation and dismantling materials are the source for closing loops within the industry. Due to the long service life of plastic pipes, the quantities from dismantling are still limited today. SPPR already offers a solution today for the increasing quantities of returns in the future.
Recyclable pipe types
Plastic pipes are usually made of a common type of plastic and have a simple structure. Old plastic pipes are generally free of harmful substances. Most plastic pipes are therefore very suitable for mechanical recycling. The only exception is electrical conduits used in building construction, which may contain prohibited flame retardants. It is therefore important to sort out flame-retardant electrical conduits before recycling so that the raw material can be reused.
Pipe types that cannot yet be recycled
In building construction in particular, there are individual pipe types that are not suitable for mechanical recycling or for which recycling is more complex. These include, for example
- Pipes with an aluminum layer, where the metal has to be cut off first.
- Drinking water pipes made of cross-linked plastic (PE-X) that cannot be re-melted.
For these pipes, which are difficult to recycle, thermal recycling may make more sense.
Use of recycled plastics from pipes
Recycled plastics from pipes can be reused in a variety of applications. The most interesting, however, is the production of new pipes in a closed loop, e.g. the production of cable protection pipes.
Role of planning
In order to exploit the potential as far as possible, recycling and resource conservation should already be taken into account when planning construction projects.
Precise planning of the installation can reduce the number of sections and faults. This results in less unfinished waste. New technologies such as BIM can support these processes as they enable more precise planning and transfer of quantities.
