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A 90% recycling effectiveness rate sounds impressive – until you consider that the remaining 10% represents millions of tonnes of recoverable plastic still being lost from the system every year.
Treatment plants that have invested in automated sorting technology routinely achieve recycling effectiveness rates around 90% for plastic containers – a substantial improvement over manual sorting alone. But that remaining 10% isn't a rounding error; at the scale of national or EU-wide plastic packaging volumes, it represents a significant quantity of material still ending up in residue streams.
Reducing plastic consumption at the source – through lighter packaging, reuse schemes, and material substitution – is one part of addressing plastic waste, and countries like Portugal have been pursuing measures along these lines. But consumption reduction alone doesn't address the plastic that's already in circulation and will continue to need recycling for years to come.
For the plastic that does enter the waste stream, recovery rates depend heavily on how well treatment plants can sort mixed packaging into polymer-specific streams. The 90% figure that automated plants achieve represents a substantial step up from manual sorting, but it also shows there's room for improvement – particularly for plastics that are harder to identify, such as dark or multi-layer packaging.
Closing the gap between 90% and higher effectiveness rates generally means upgrading sorting technology – adding sensors capable of identifying materials that existing equipment misses, or incorporating AI-based vision systems that can supplement spectral data with visual pattern recognition. Each incremental improvement in sorting accuracy translates directly into more material recovered rather than lost to residue.
In markets like Spain, where recycled plastic volumes have increasingly overtaken the amount sent to landfill, the trend illustrates what's possible when treatment plants are equipped with the right technology. PICVISA's ECOPACK optical sorting systems are designed to push recycling effectiveness beyond the 90% baseline, helping treatment plants recover the plastic that would otherwise be the difference between a good recycling rate and a genuinely high one.
Discover ECOPACK for plastics sortingGet in touch with our team to discover how PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions can fit your recycling operation.