This document specifies the general “design for recycling” guidelines for EPS raw materials. It provides guidance on the impact of specific design characteristics on the recyclability of the product in practice and recommended design options to ensure that the product is recyclable, including target values and performance ranges, where applicable. It also provides a definition of recyclable product and of design for recycling.
This document refers to EPS thermal insulation products but may be used for other EPS construction products where appropriate.
This document refers to the recycling processes of EPS insulation products. The sorting and collecting steps are not part of this document.
This document takes into account all currently known recycling processes that are suitable to enable the circular economy for insulation materials. Particular attention is paid to ensuring that the most energy-efficient processes are given preference, especially mechanical recycling.
For some of these processes, practical experience has been gained over many years, so a basic knowledge base for the development of a guideline is already available.
At the same time, it is important to also take into account future-oriented processes, for which at the moment little but increasing experience is available or which have so far only been implemented on a small scale.