Recyclate quality needs a common language

For virgin material, material types, specifications and technical data sheets are usually well established. With recyclates, the situation is more complex: different input streams, collection systems, sorting qualities and processing methods can lead to very different property profiles — even within the same polymer type.

Technical data sheets are helpful, but they often only provide a limited view of these differences. Testing scope, key values and presentation can vary from supplier to supplier. As a result, procurement, quality assurance and application teams face a high level of interpretation effort — especially when materials need to be approved, compared or documented for customers.

The problem is often not the recyclate itself.
The problem is the lack of a common basis for quality assessment.

The practical consequences:
▪️Offers are difficult to compare.
▪️Material approvals become time-consuming individual projects.
▪️Good recyclate quality cannot always be documented neutrally.
▪️Sourcing decisions remain uncertain.
▪️Brands and manufacturers need reliable proof for the use of recyclates.

plastship Monitored Materials combines verified material data with information on the input stream and translates it into a standardised assessment. The goal is to create a shared understanding of recyclate quality — across suppliers, applications and market roles.

The system makes quality visible through:
▪️an Overall Quality Score from 0 to 10,
▪️three clear quality classes: Premium, Plus and Proven,
▪️four key quality dimensions,
▪️benchmarking against a growing material database,
▪️and an optional verification certificate as neutral proof of quality.

This turns many individual measurement values into a compact, understandable and comparable statement on material quality.

A quality score alone does not answer the most important question:

How good is this material compared with other recyclates in the same group?

That is why Monitored Materials classifies verified materials within a growing database — both against the overall market and within the respective origin group, for example post-consumer recyclates.

The classification is based on stable benchmark levels such as Top 5%, Top 10%, Top 25% and Top 50%. This makes it easier to see whether a material stands out in the market, performs solidly or needs to be reviewed more closely for specific applications.

This turns recyclate quality from something measurable into something more predictable.

plastship Monitored Materials is not just a concept. The system is already live on the plastship platform – with 226 tested materials, Quality Rankings, Fit Assessment, best-fit references to virgin materials, analytics and PDF verification certificates.

The goal: a central quality database and coordination platform for plastic recyclates that makes quality visible, capacities more predictable and the use of recyclates easier to document.

What you will learn in the white paper
The white paper provides a compact and practical overview of:
▪️why technical data sheets alone are often not enough for recyclates,
▪️why recyclates of the same polymer type can perform differently,
▪️which quality dimensions are relevant for assessment,
▪️how the Overall Quality Score is calculated,
▪️how Premium, Plus and Proven are defined,
▪️why benchmarking is essential for true comparability,
▪️how processors, recyclers, brand owners and associations benefit from standardised quality assessments,
▪️and how plastship Monitored Materials is being developed into a central quality database for plastic recyclates.