Sony has developed a practical “material-to-material recycling” that reuses plastic from end-of-life TVs for a new fire-retardant plastic material. Plastics “saved” from the back of newer TV models that have reached the end of their lifecycle.

According to Sony, “Material-to-Material recycling refers to recycling where materials recovered from used products are reused as raw materials in new products of the same category with equivalent quality.”

Recycling TV Materials

The Material-to-Material recycling is possible because they successfully incorporated plastic recovered from the end-of-life TVs for SORPLAS (Sustainable Oriented Recycled Plastic), a flame-retardant recycled polycarbonate resin developed by Sony. Additionally, Sony said in a press release that SORPLAS  achieves high quality with high recycled material content (up to 99%). It also reportedly reduces carbon emissions “significantly” during production.

For the first time, Sony’s SORPLAS recycled plastic will be added to the back of the 65-inch 4K OLED BRAVIA 8 (2024 models).

The plastic materials that they recovered from the end-of-life TVs contain various types of plastic, which makes it hard to reuse because of the differences in strength and texture. As a result, the BRAVIA team and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation, the developer of SORPLAS, created advanced sorting technology for television reuse.

According to Sony, the technology allows them to collect and sort specific plastic from used TV rear covers from any manufacturer and reuse it as high-quality raw materials.

Eventually, Sony wants everything to come full circle. In the future, the company envisions all of its TVs having the SORPLAS rear covers. So, when the end-of-life TVs are recycled, they can reuse the fire-retardant plastic (which is manufactured with recycled materials) to create more rear covers for TVs, thus completing the “closed-loop recycling.”