The University of Manchester has been awarded over £1.3 million to develop technologies that could recover valuable materials from hard-to-recycle waste including disposable vapes and cars.
The three‑year project, REMOVE‑UM: REcovering MOlecular ValuE from Unrecycled Multi‑materials, funded by EPSRC and Defra will develop new technologies to tackle some of the most challenging waste products.
Recycling has the potential to recover significant value from materials at the end of their life, playing a crucial role in building a more sustainable future. However, while current systems are effective for simple, single materials that can be easily sorted and cleaned, they struggle to deal with complex, multi-material products.
Michael Shaver, Project Lead and Professor of Polymer Science at The University of Manchester, explains: "Recycling to recover value from materials at end-of-life is a tantalising component of a sustainable future. However, multi-material products - vapes, cars, batteries, furniture - comingle a host of plastics, metals, glass, ceramics and other materials designed to meet ever-increasing consumer demand for low-cost, high-performance, lightweight, aesthetically pleasing consumer goods. These staggeringly complex multi-materials are reaching their end-of-life with no strategy to facilitate the (re)integration of their components, materials or molecules into a circular economy.
"Developing an economically viable and environmentally advantageous end of-life for multi-materials is vital. However, to achieve this in a just manner, it is essential we understand economic, societal, and environmental outcomes, coupling systemic approaches to ambitious fundamental research."
The REMOVE‑UM project will take a fundamentally new approach, developing methods to break down these materials at a molecular level and recover valuable components that can be reused.
The work will combine expertise from across The University of Manchester, bringing together specialists in chemical recycling, catalysis, sustainability assessment and materials science.
The project will focus on four key areas:
Analysing waste streams to understand their composition and potential value
Developing chemical processes to selectively break down complex materials into valuable products
Separating recovered molecules efficiently while minimising environmental impact
Working closely with industry partners to translate discoveries into real‑world applications and accelerate their commercial application.
By targeting materials that current infrastructure cannot process, the team aims to complement existing recycling systems, rather than replace them.
A core aim of the project is to ensure new recycling approaches are technically feasible, economically viable and environmentally sustainable. Life cycle assessment and economic analysis will be integrated throughout to guide decisions and deliver real benefits for society. The project also aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels by recovering reusable chemicals, while generating insights into how waste systems operate to reduce investment risk and support future recycling infrastructure.
Dr Kedar Pandya, Executive Director for Strategy at EPSRC said: "This investment reflects our commitment to building a cleaner, more sustainable UK economy. By funding ambitious, collaborative and impactful research into recycling technologies, we are helping to tackle some of the most complex challenges in our waste system from collection through to currently hard-to-recycle material recovery. The research being undertaken, which is jointly funded by EPSRC and Defra, will support the long-term transition to a circular economy and creates the conditions for genuine economic and environmental benefit for the UK."
The project will be co-led by Dr Ciaran Lahive, Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow in the Department of Materials; Dr Rosa Cuellar-Franca, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering; Professor Marloes Peeters, Chair in Engineering Biology; Christopher Hardacre, Professor of Chemical Engineering; and Dr Shanshan Xu, Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow.
It builds on sustained work in this area by these researchers, including:
- Chemical Recycling of Polycarbonate Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene Blends via Organocatalyzed Acetolysis, ChemSusChem, https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.202502161
- Recyclable Epoxy Composites Built with a Biobased Hardener, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c07184
- Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Supercritical CO2 in Gel-spun UHMWPE Fibre Production, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c07037
- Defining quality by quantifying degradation in the mechanical recycling of polyethylene, Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52856-8
- Untangling the chemical complexity of plastics to improve life cycle outcomes, Nature Materials Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-024-00705-x
