materials Review Recent Advancements in Plastic Packaging Recycling: A Mini-Review Valentina Beghetto 1,2, * , Roberto Sole 1 , Chiara Buranello 1 , Marco Al-Abkal 1 and Manuela Facchin 1   Citation: Beghetto, V.; Sole, R.; Buranello, C.; Al-Abkal, M.; Facchin, M. Recent Advancements in Plastic Packaging Recycling: A Mini-Review. Materials 2021, 14, 4782. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ma14174782 Academic Editor: John T. Kiwi Received: 22 July 2021 Accepted: 19 August 2021 Published: 24 August 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems, University Ca’Foscari of Venice, Via Torino 155, 30172 Mestre, Italy; Roberto.sole@unive.it (R.S.); chiara.buranello@unive.it (C.B.); 870009@stud.unive.it (M.A.-A.); manuela.facchin@unive.it (M.F.) 2 Crossing S.r.l., Viale della Repubblica 193/b, 31100 Treviso, Italy * Correspondence: beghetto@unive.it Abstract: Today, the scientific community is facing crucial challenges in delivering a healthier world for future generations. Among these, the quest for circular and sustainable approaches for plastic recycling is one of the most demanding for several reasons. Indeed, the massive use of plastic materials over the last century has generated large amounts of long-lasting waste, which, for much time, has not been object of adequate recovery and disposal politics. Most of this waste is generated by packaging materials. Nevertheless, in the last decade, a new trend imposed by environmental concerns brought this topic under the magnifying glass, as testified by the increasing number of related publications. Several methods have been proposed for the recycling of polymeric plastic materials based on chemical or mechanical methods. A panorama of the most promising studies related to the recycling of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS) is given within this review. Keywords: waste valorization; plastic waste; circular economy; recovery; recycling 1. Introduction In recent years, the health of our planet has become a problem of crucial importance, with plastic recovery and disposal being of primary relevance [1]. Since the introduction of Bakelite in 1907 by Leo H. Baekeland, the first fully synthetic polymer, the plastic industry has evolved to revolutionize the way we live [2–5]. Polymers and plastic products own their well-known ubiquity and massive use to their excellent chemical–physical properties, which guarantee light weight, low price, and endurance [6]. Thanks to their great versatility, plastics are among the most used materials and find applications in many industrial sectors such as packaging, automotive vehicles, construction, and electronic devices [1,7,8]. Worldwide, over 360 Mt of fossil-based poly- mers are produced yearly, with an annual growth rate of 8.4%, two times higher than world global gross growth rate of production over the same period [5](Figure 1a). The Euro- pean plastic converter demand in 2018 reached 51.2 Mt, mainly to produce polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinylchloride (PVC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS) (Figure 1b). These are mainly employed for packaging (39.9%), construc- tion (19.8%), automotive vehicles (9.9%), and electronic devices (6.2%) [9] (Figure 1c). A gradual switch to biobased plastics has been witnessed by the increasing use at an industrial level of alternative raw materials [10,11] such as polylactic acid (PLA) [12], polybutyl succinate (PBS) [13,14], polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) [15–17], and polyethy- lene furanoate (PEF) [18–20], together with different composite materials produced from starch [21–24], CMC [25–30], wood [31,32], lignin [33,34], and many different agro-industrial wastes [35–37]. Nevertheless, 99% of plastics produced today are fossil-based polymers, and they will continue to play an important role in many manufacturing compartments for a long time. Materials 2021, 14, 4782. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14174782 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials