TAKE-BACK & RE-USE SYSTEM FROM SKI BOOT RENTALS FOR SORTING AND RECYCLING OF MULTI-PLASTICS COMPONENTS

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

BACKGROUND

Every year in Europe there are 65 million people skiing and every skier needs high quality ski boots with good performance, safety characteristics and ergonomic comfort. Time and use rapidly degrade ski boot materials, so there comes a point when the ski boots must be substituted (average lifespan is 3 years for rentals and 5 years for private individuals), which at present means bringing all ski boots to disposal. The recovery of post-consumption ski boots has been attempted by some producersin the past, but it failed. All post-consumer ski boots are sent to landfill and large amounts of soft and hard plastics are not recycled. An additional environmental problem is related to the generation of pre-consumer scraps during the cutting process for liner manufacturing, completely landfilled or disposed through incineration with energy recovery. Yearly, 3.5 million pairs of ski boots are produced worldwide, which are made entirely of virgin materials and landfilled after 3 to 5 years.

OBJECTIVES

The main objective of the LIFE RESKIBOOT project is to provide high-quality and cost-competitive ski boots made with recycled materials, thus zeroing plastic post-processing waste, and decreasing end-of-life disposal with the implementation of a take-back and re-use service for post-consumer ski boots.

The specific project objectives are:

Launch on the market of ski boots made with about 90% of recycled materials (both for the construction of the external part and the internal part) obtained from post-consumer ski boots turned into secondary raw materials after a sorting method, based on an electromagnetic effect, able to achieve a 95% separation efficiency for the polyurethane and foamed materials;

Manufacture of 1 000 pairs of skiboots, and their use validated on real ski slopes to prove that they can be commercialised and perform well for skiers, in terms of comfort, technical features and safety properties; and

Develop an optimised manufacturing process for ski boots using about 90% of recycled raw materials and eliminating processing offcuts that in current conventional processes are up to 40% of foam materials used for the liner.

RESKIBOOT is fully in line with the objectives of EU legislation and policy on waste. It also contributes to the implementation of the EU Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, as well as other policy areas, such as the Roadmap to a Resource-Efficient Europe (COM (2011) 571) or the EU 2020 Climate and Energy Package.

RESULTS

Expected results: The LIFE RESKIBOOT project will implement a new circular economy model, in line with the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, over the full product life cycle of ski boots, including a take-back and hard-outer shell re-use service for ski rentals, to manufacture ski boots from recycled soft and hard multi-plastics.

At the end of the project:

1 000 ski boot pairs manufactured and tested by skiers to demonstrate comfort and technical performance;

The new ski-boot eco-friendly concept shown to generate savings on fossil resource consumption (i.e. oil and gas feedstock) because virgin raw materials are replaced by secondary materials, as well as a reduction of landfilled ski boots;

Three years after the project end, 27 000 pairs of recycled ski boot commercialised, with potential environmental benefits due to the reductions in resource use, waste generated, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions;

Reduction of around 61 500 kg of waste sent to disposal, due to sorting and recycling of ski-boot components;

Avoidance of approximately 200 tons of GHG emissions, expressed in CO2 equivalent, which would be released by producing equivalent virgin materials; and

About 7 500 GJ of oil and natural gas saved, which would have been required as feedstock and fuels to produce virgin raw materials.