Sustainable future for plastics

Promise, an international R&D project aimed at ensuring sustainable recyclability for electrical and electronic products has been launched under the IMS (Intelligent Manufacturing Systems) program.

IMS is an industry-led, global, collaborative R&D program that provides Australian firms and research institutions with cost-effective access to overseas technology.

Promise is an acronym derived from 'Product Embedded Information System for Service and End-of-Life'. A consortium of Australian companies has joined a number of global organisations in the automotive, office equipment and white goods manufacturing sectors to benefit commercially from participation in the project.

The global participants include Toyota Motors, Ricoh, Electrolux Zanussi, SAP, Fiat, Bombardier and Cambridge University. The Promise project, which is expected to take about three and a half years to complete, focuses on the last phase of the product life cycle, commonly known as 'end-of-life'.

Its objective is to develop the technology and associated information systems needed to trace a product from its design and production through to use, maintenance and end-of-life. By closing the information loop on the product life cycle, it will give manufactures a complete range of data about product use, servicing and disposal, and assist designers in developing new generations of more sustainable products. To achieve the objective, the project partners in Europe, Japan and the USA will design a product-embedded information device and a mobile reader that communicates through state-of-the-art technologies.

In Australia, the Promise consortium, co-ordinated by the Industrial Research Institute Swinburne, will undertake complementary research to identify market opportunities for post-industrial plastics at their end-of-life.

The Australian consortium's goal is to develop the technology for blending high-value, low-volume engineering plastics such as ABS and nylon, with low-value, high-volume plastics such as PET. Additionally, the consortium will identify applications for the plastic blends and incorporate the information into a database that will assist recyclers and product designers. The consortium's members include peak industry group, the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association (AEEMA), and Melbourne-based recycler, MRI. AEEMA represents some 380 companies supplying infrastructure, products and manufacturing-related services to Australian and world markets. MRI is Australia's leading computer recycler and the agent managing handset and battery recycling on behalf of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association.

Joint owner of MRI, Will Le Messurier, said that Promise relates directly to MRI's core business and one of the major benefits of participation was the access to 'significant international players' in his company's field. "I was impressed by the calibre of the participants at the Lausanne meeting, particularly some of the major research institutions and the global manufacturing companies," Le Messurier said.