Call for Expressions of Interest - Participants and beneficiaries of a study on the recycling and recovery of plastic health care waste

Polymeris, associated with ADI-NA, will launch a study on the recycling and recovery of plastic health care waste as part of the ORMAT call for projects, for which the next submission date is June 1:
To support the relevance of this study, we first need a letter of support from you, which will be attached to the file.

Context:

This study is based on two observations:

• The first one, carried by many actors of the health sector in France, indicates that this sector is a very large consumer of plastic material (secondary/primary packaging, consumables, medical devices).
  However, at the present time, at the end of its life, this material is not fully recycled/valued, despite the fact that it has a high purity grade and a recognized traceability.
• On the other hand, plastics producers will have to increase their incorporation rates of recycled materials in the coming years for regulatory reasons or in response to market demand, including in the healthcare sector.

Study Setting:

Faced with these two observations, it would be wise to be able to bring together these two maillions of the value chain in order to allow them to communicate and find solutions together to transform the current linear model into a circular economy.

Polymeris, together with ADI-NA (Innovation Development Agency in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, which is the initiator of the Loop Santé program), would like to implement this study, which will aim to initiate future concrete actions for valorization.
It will be broken down as follows:

State of the art on the existing valorisation of these materials - benchmark

• Bibliographical study on the existing ways of valorisation of these materials in the health sector (in closed loop: from health to health)
• Bibliographical study on the existing ways of valorisation of these materials in other sectors (in open loop: from health to other sectors)

Goals for this part:

• • To avoid redundancy in the search for recovery methods
  • Be inspired by what is already done to go further (apply these processes to other materials if possible, to other types of waste of the same material but which had perhaps not been targeted as a deposit until now, ...)
  • Be inspired by what is done for other sectors if possible

Experience of health actors

• Interview of health actors: industrialists, health institutions, R&D (obstacles/barriers, advantages/opportunities, ...)
• Interview with plastics manufacturers (obstacles/barriers, advantages/opportunities, etc.)
• Interview with collectors/recyclers (obstacles/barriers, advantages/opportunities, ...)

Goals for this part:

• • Be aware of the current obstacles for field actors
  • Be able to put in place things to overcome these technical or pragmatic obstacles
  • Concentrate R&D on solutions that will be developed taking into account all the obstacles/benefits

Suite : règlementation et faisabilité à venir

• Regulations: current situation and evolution in the years to come
• Medium and long term reflections (according to what is already done and what will be possible in the future)

Goals for this part:

• • To guide the solution providers for the future
  • To filter via the regulation the field of possibilities opened thanks to the evoked tracks