A circular economy use of waste metalized plastic film as a reinforcing filler in recycled polypropylene packaging for injection molding applications

In the recycling point of view, the metalized plastic film is widely known to be one of the most difficult materials to be recycled due to its structural complexity. This paper investigates the effects of the ground metalized-plastic film (MF) as a filler and reinforcement in recycled polypropylene (rPP) packaging to produce a new material through circular economy. MF was incorporated to rPP from 2 to 10 wt% and it was processed by using a twin-screw extruder and an injection molding machine. For MF, elemental analysis, and x-ray diffractometer (XRD) confirmed the existence of C, O, and Al, while the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) result evidenced the melting position of linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE). For, rPP/MF composites, MF was found to significantly reinforce rPP with the increased tensile strength. A maximum increase of the tensile strength by around 33% was observed when MF was added at 8 wt%. Elongation at break was found to reduce with MF loading. However, there was no significant difference among rPP with 6–10 wt% MF. DSC results indicated the shifts of both crystallization and melting peaks together with the reduction of the degree of crystallinity (Xc). Based on the tensile strength, tensile elongation at break results together with the statistical analysis and waste utilization issues, the rPP with 10 wt% MF formulation was selected as a final product prototyping.