The average amount of plastic waste ‘produced’ by each European every year is 31 kilos. The goal of the European Plastics Pact is for all the plastic we use every day to be recyclable or reusable by 2025. The European Plastics Pact describes agreements between plastic producers, large companies, governments and recyclers. Together we must ensure that we use less plastic and reuse or recycle more.

AVR is contributing towards achieving this goal. Around 10% of the residual household waste that goes onto the Post-separation Installation conveyor belt is plastic – bags, bottles and containers – and drink cartons. The Post-separation Installation is equipped with the latest technical aids and gadgets, such as flat screens, wind shifters, ballistic separators, a shredder and near-infrared scanners. As the residual waste travels through the Installation the foils, films, hard plastics and drink cartons are all separated from the residual waste and compressed into bales ready for recycling companies in Europe to process them into new products.

The remaining residual waste is moved, via conveyor belt, to our Waste-to-Energy Plant for conversion into energy and raw materials used by the community. In fact, what we are actually doing is sending it back to where it came from – people’s homes!

These new technologies not only enable us to extract more plastic and drink cartons from the residual waste than is extracted in the home, but mean the material we extract is of a better quality. This is why more and more municipalities are seeing the advantages of post-separation compared to source-separation. Another advantage of post-separation is that it requires minimal effort from residents.