Plastic Recycling

40% of collected plastic goes to landfill because it is not recognised by automatic sorting systems. Black plastic, for instance, is not detected and is responsible for 500.000 tons of material that goes to landfill every year just in Europe.

Coloured plastics are tricky to be separated because of additives, fillers and dyes, so recycled materials loose value and purity in each cycle and can’t be used again.

SiNBioSys solves these problems with an innovative, silicon based, marker technology.

SiQDs offer the possibility of sorting plastic waste with a biocompatible and cheap material, obtaining purity of the recycled polymer higher than 99%. Silicon nanocrystals (SiNC) emit a light signal with a lifetime longer than other markers and can be obtained in different colours to encode and sort many different polymers.

This technology works with existing industrial sorting systems without hardware modifications. SiNC absorb UV light and can replace filters to protect plastic from sunlight. They are invisible to the human eye so they can be used also for transparent objects.