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Recovered Carbon Black Europe is the must-attend event for anyone involved within the carbon black supply chain! The Recovered Carbon Black Europe conference provides a much-needed platform for experts and innovators, who research, develop and commercialise recovered carbon black to stay updated on the latest market developments, challenges and opportunities. Over 400 rCB representatives are expected to join us at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower hotel on the 5-6 November 2025.

Today, more than 80 percent of the carbon backbone that most chemicals are made of is still derived from fossil raw materials. This means that neither the basic chemicals, which are made from petroleum feedstocks, nor the products made from them are sustainable. The load limits, such as climate change, ocean acidification and integrity of the biosphere, are far exceeded by most chemicals. Some chemicals even exceed Earth's exposure limits by more than 100 times. This is the conclusion reached by the University (ETH) in Zurich in a recent study published in the expert journal Green Chemistry (2021, 23, 9881) in which the most produced 490 chemicals have been analysed through the lens of seven planetary boundaries representing critical biophysical limits that should never be exceeded.

Valebridge Media Services (VMS), the international media services company in Crewe (United Kingdom) and Madrid (Spain), has announced the shortlist of nominees for the 2023 edition of the Recircle Awards, the event organised to promote and recognise sustainable innovation, production processes, management and services in the tire retreading and recycling sector. The shortlist, chosen from a preliminary list of candidates nominated by the public has once again been compiled by the Recircle Awards Nominations Committee made up of 14 experts, including respected tire industry journalists, industry association heads and independent consultants from around the world.

The International Organization for Standardization (2008, 2013) defines chemical recycling as a production of new raw materials by changing the chemical structure of polymers (e.g., plastic, rubber) through depolymerization, excluding energy recovery and incineration. Whereby depolymerisation is understood as a reversion of a polymer to its monomer(s) or to a polymer of lower relative molecular mass. This irreversible chemical decomposition (depolymerization) in pyrolysis processes is caused solely by a rise in temperature in an inert or oxygen free environment (UIPAC, 2021).

JANUARY 2024: Global circularity must be doubled by 2032. The Circularity Gap Report 2024 reveals a decline in global circularity to 7.2%, emphasizing the urgent need for transformative action. Excessive material consumption drives environmental harm and inequality, with high-income nations disproportionately responsible. The report outlines 16 solutions across key sectors to reduce material use by 30% while improving well-being.

By passing the Green Deal in 2019, the European Union (EU) set the course for more sustainable investments, for example in areas like renewable energy, biodiversity, or circular economy. The goal is to reach a climate-neutral economy in the EU by 2050, with a reduction goal of 55% by in 2030. To achieve these climate goals, the Green Deal includes an investment plan of 1 trillion euros over the next 10 years. Despite this huge investment, the EU depends also on the support of the private sector to achieve the Paris climate agreement.

Modern chemical tire recycling (pyrolysis) plants produce environmentally friendly chemical raw materials, and thus they support the overarching and specifically specified goals of the EU Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, they can make a significant contribution to reducing GHG emissions in the manufacture of tires.

In the end of this article we make an estimation of a possible annual market size of recovered carbon black, modestly assuming virgin carbon black substitution rate at 20%. Hint: numbers suggest that recovered carbon black production is a profitable business rich in opportunities. Traditionally Carbon Black (CB) has been used as both a reinforcing agent and filler in automobile tires. Along with better understanding of CB’s unique properties as a material, it is presently used in a much wider range of applications across a large variety of products – car tires, conveyor belts, inks, plastic pipes, rubber mats, shoe soles and so forth. Virgin CB contains only trace amounts of impurities and carbon content is very close to 100%.

The chemical recycling of end-of-life tires (ELT) via state-of-the-art pyrolysis technologies does not only avoid greenhouse gas emissions compared to today’s conventional production processes, but it also increases the resource efficiency while closing the loop in the transition to a circular economy. However, civil organisations criticise the production of fuel through chemical recycling, sometimes mutilate the terminology, pointing to the associated environmental impacts, while they overlook the fact that modern ELT pyrolysis concepts are not geared towards the production of "fuels" (which, by the way, should not be defined as "recycling" but rather as less preferred "recovery" according to the EU waste hierarchy).