A visit to Environnement Recycling: towards an industrial sector for the recovery of brominated plastics

On an industrial site of 17,000 m², more than 200 employees ensure the depollution, crushing and sorting of equipment via a combination of technologies, among the most advanced in Europe for the separation of brominated plastics , achieving levels of purity rarely seen on an industrial scale.

These plastics, which contain bromine and antimony trioxide flame retardants , are still mostly incinerated today due to a lack of alternatives, even though they represent a strategic source of critical metals and molecules. Their recovery is a major environmental and economic challenge, especially as Europe seeks to secure its supply of critical raw materials.

The DeeeMines project is part of this circular economy logic: it aims to transform these complex flows into secondary resources through a selective chemical recycling process , capable of extracting and purifying bromine and antimony without degrading the polymer matrix .

This visit helped to identify several areas of technical and scientific collaboration between our teams, with the aim of carrying out prototype tests as early as 2026 .

Many thanks to Farida and the Environnement Recycling team for their warm welcome and the quality of our discussions. Together, we are helping to develop a French sector for the recycling of brominated plastics .