The recycling of waste pharmaceutical blisters is still taking its baby steps towards more sustainable future. Nowadays most of the used blisters are ending up to incineration plant, where the valuable materials are mainly lost forever. In Aalto University the scientists have developed a new method for waste pharmaceutical blisters recycling based on selective fragmentation that has been mainly employed by geologists for ages. With the selective fragmentation, the energy consumption for producing secondary aluminium could potentially be very low compared to the primary production. Moreover, the scientist have also been working on different recycling method too, which is based on a selective chemical dissolution of the adhesive glue between metal and polymer layers. With the selective dissolution both metallic and polymer layers could potentially be recycled efficiently.
Check Petteri Halli’s presentation on how to recycle pharmaceutical blister packaging in SUDDEN project seminar on 11 May 2021:
