Wood–plastic composites as potential applications of recycled plastics of electronic waste and recycled particleboard

• Recycled WEEE-plastics and particleboard were investigated for potential use in WPC.
• Increasing wood content resulted in increased stiffness and strength of WPC.
• The coupling agent SMA affected strength properties but not the stiffness of WPC.
• Elementary analysis obtained content of Cd, Cr, Cu, As and Pb in recycled resources.

Wood–plastic composites were injection-molded from recycled acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene and polystyrene from post-consumer electronics in the interest of resource efficiency and ecological product design. The wood content was raised in two steps from 0% to 30% and 60%. Reinforcement performance of recycled particleboard was compared to virgin Norway spruce. Styrene maleic anhydride copolymer was used as the coupling agent in the composites with a 60% wood proportion to investigate the influence on interfacial adhesion. The composites were characterized by using physical and mechanical standard testing methods. Results showed increased stiffness (flexural and tensile modulus of elasticity), water uptake and density with the incorporation of wood particles to the plastic matrices. Interestingly, strength (flexural and tensile) increased as well. Wood particles from Norway spruce exhibited reinforcement in terms of strength and stiffness. The same results were achieved with particleboard particles in terms of stiffness, but the strength of the composites was negatively affected. The coupling agent affected the strength properties beneficially, which was not observed for the stiffness of the composites. The presence of cadmium, chromium, copper, arsenic and lead in the recycled resources was found by an elementary analysis. This can be linked to color pigments in recycled plastics and insufficient separation processes of recycled wood particles for particleboard production.