The world, in 2020, went through a situation of general human, economic and social difficulty with heavy repercussions for all of us.

The repeated restrictions on personal freedoms due to Covid are changing our approach also in the business world with the limitations of human contacts and the massive use of internet communication technologies.

This brought advantages and disadvantages, but surely there were no different possibilities to continue working and to preserve companies and jobs.

In the world of the circular economy , an activity we deal with, the recycled plastic sector has heavily affected by the fall in oil prices, with the consequence of compressing the prices of recycled raw materials to a dangerous point for the financial sustainability of companies.

The elimination of the gap, in many cases, between the price of virgin raw materials and recycled ones, has resulted in some sectors not related to food or detergents, a drop in orders for recycled raw materials compared to the past.

The upward expectations of the prices of virgin raw materials are not very clear, as, in a macroeconomic framework, the planetary crisis has substantially reduced the consumption of fuels (airplanes, cars, ships, trucks, industries) favoring the increase in the production of virgin plastics at highly compressed prices.

Furthermore, in a situation like the one described, countries where the recycling problem is not so felt, the lack of a substantial price gap between the raw material virgin and regenerated, led to a shift in purchases towards virgin raw materials with the loss of entire markets in the sector of recycled raw materials.

But 2020 has not passed in vain, there have been visible technological advances that bode well for next year in a new course for post consumer plastics. The research has led to good results on the development of uprecycling , which has the aim of increasing the quality and use of post-consumer plastics, in sectors and on products that until recently they could not be produced with these types of recycled plastics.

Sorters, washes, extruders, screen changers, degassers and analytical odor control systems have brought a breath of quality to the recycling chain , substantially improving the raw material.

And it is precisely on the control of odors that the battle will be played to increase the use of post-consumer plastics in sectors that still do not use them today.

If until yesterday the definition of a odor-related disorder was, not only empirical, but subjective, as it was made through the sensation perceived by the human nose, today, through the laboratory instrument that performs a chemical analysis of the volatiles produced by the samples, nothing will be more subjective and uncertain.

Those who use this tool, called an electronic nose in a reductive way , create a certified license for the smell of their own raw material or final product, whose values, analytical and incontrovertible, leave no room for discussion.

Those who buy and sell recycled raw materials or products made from post-consumer plastic today have the possibility to certify the levels of the contained products that generate odors.

The reasons to see 2021 in the post-consumer recycled plastic sector with a certain cautious optimism, I believe there are, so the gift we can give ourselves is a proactive attitude that accompanies us to improve our life, our work and the environment in which we live.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.