Boosting Plastic and Packaging Recycling By Advanced Mechanical Treatment of Residual Waste

Even if the big efforts in increasing the separation at source of waste and the positive effects that this practices had on the waste recycling, a large part of recyclable materials still remain collected in the fraction of waste not separated at source. Furthermore some macro indicators confirmed that on the basis of the current status of the art when separated collection achieves percentages of 50%-60% the achievement of slight increase in the recycling phase requires big efforts in the collection phase. For this reason the introduction of advanced material recovery facilities able to extract recyclables also from the indifferentiated waste streams appears of big interest for the sector. The present study reports about some pilot tests performed Italy and on the possible benefits achievable by this solution.