Johanna Langwieser, Lukas Zeilerbauer, Jörg Fischer,
"Identification of the recyclable content of polyethylene films in the Upper Austrian waste streams"
, in International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, Vol. 17, Nummer 1, Taylor & Francis, 6-2024
Original Titel:
Identification of the recyclable content of polyethylene films in the Upper Austrian waste streams
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
The European Union (EU) has set ambitious recycling targets for plastic packaging waste of 50% and 55%
by the end of 2025 and 2030, respectively. Austria?s recycling rate is currently below 30%, necessitating
significant improvements in collection, sorting, and recycling efficiencies. To enhance the sorting efficiency,
understanding the composition and condition of waste is crucial. Our study focuses on the
identification of the recyclable content of polyethylene (PE) films in Upper Austrian waste streams for
plastics recycling. This involved the manual sorting of three waste streams through various steps. As
a result, the occurrences of monolayer PE films in the post-consumer waste streams were obtained. Based
on the apprehended data, a circularity indicator (CI), which is a rough estimation of material circularity
that takes into account the losses in both quantity and quality when reprocessing materials, together
with a sensitivity analysis was calculated for Austria, which revealed that reducing demand and increasing
the amount of recycled materials is more beneficial to the CI than improving energy efficiency. This
research fills knowledge gaps on the availability of PE film waste in the various waste streams and can be
used as a basis for enhancing the recycling rate in PE film recycling.