To shred or to disassemble? Recycling of plastics in mass consumer goods

The recycling of mass consumer products like TV-sets and computers is gaining attention in Europe. The presence of (precious) metals traditionally has been the driving force for the recycling of equipment. While the plastics in electronics usually have a high quality, the recovery of them is problematic. In this paper the results are presented of a European project, where the (robotized) dismantling and plastics recovery has been compared with the results of shredding and physical/mechanical material separation processes.