Different Approaches For The Plastic Recycling Industry Within The European Community

With the increasing awareness associated with the state of the environment and with the increasing urge to find optimal solutions towards a sustaina-ble future, emerges the need to expose the present of the recycling industry to identify what has been done and what could be done to improve this technological process. In this article the focus is the recycling of plastic within the European Community. To this end, three different countries were selected for analysis: Portugal, Germany, and Italy. First, an introduction about the plastic reality and its purpose in today’s society is provided. Then, the results of a survey, created to understand the level of education regarding environmental awareness in the distinct countries, are provided as well. An in-depth analysis on the state of technology and processes in the three countries follows, with the goal of identifying innovations and un-derstanding the recycling rates and waste generation rates. Finally, it is con-cluded that Germany is the most efficient in the recycling of plastic, in terms of recycling rates and innovation at the level of processes and tech-nology, followed by Italy and then Portugal.