In the 2022 edition of Appleyard Lees’ Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report, our attorneys analysed patent filings across several key environmental issues facing the world, including energy, materials, and alternative proteins and food production. This year’s section on plastics recycling revealed that after almost two decades of decline, technology innovation has re-emerged to reach a worldwide peak of 423 priority patent filings in 2020 – an almost 130% increase on 2018 (186) and the most prolific patent filing year since 2000 (294).
Section authors, patent attorney and partner David Walsh, and European patent attorney Amelia Barton, conclude that while, at present, the most common recycling process used to recover carbon fibre from composite waste is pyrolysis (as expected from the data), we may see an increase in the number of patent applications filed for solvolysis overall and specifically in this area.
Plastics recycling – Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report 2022 (foleon.com)
In November 2021, we published the first edition of our report, examining global progress in green innovation, and what it might mean to countries, commerce and the planet.
For 2022, we’ve refined the scope of the report. We have revisited the innovation areas of plastics, batteries and food production, and for the first time included analyses of technological developments in carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS), hydrogen, heat pumps and solar energy, all of which are grouped into the categories of food, materials, and energy.
