Recycling of coated and painted materials: introduction and link with textile recycling

 
The main goal of the DECOAT project is to enable circular use of textiles and plastic parts with (multilayer) "coatings". Such parts are typically not recyclable yet as the coatings act as a too large and non-removable contamination. Within our project we focus on novel triggerable smart polymer material systems to debond the coatings and on the corresponding recycling processes. With coatings we refer here to functional and performance coatings and paints as well as to adhesion layers. The various options there are for textile recycling in general, their advantages and drawbacks as well as their maturity will be discussed. We will also discuss how the DECOAT developments contribute to realizing these options.