Almost all old ketchup bottles, toothpaste tubes and other plastic packaging that are handed over to a recycling station in Sweden are transported to Motala.
Sweden’s largest plastic recycling facility is located here. But it is only one third of all plastic packaging that is sent for recycling that can be recycled today. The rest is burned up.
– We have technical limitations. Certain types of plastics are very difficult to detect and identify correctly with our equipment, says Mattias Philipson, CEO of Swedish Plastic Recycling, which operates the facility in Motala.
Melted down to pellets
All packaging that can ultimately be recycled is sorted out and packed into trucks.
Then they are driven down to the Netherlands or Germany to be washed and chipped down, before they can be melted down into pellets and become a new plastic product.
This is over 20,000 tonnes of old packaging that is transported to the continent each year. There is currently no actor in Sweden that has sufficient capacity to do the job.
– It is extremely much more important that we recycle the plastic than that we burn it, says Mattias Philipsson.
Hope for change – within two years
Every day, trucks roll hundreds of miles of Swedish plastic for recycling outside the country. The transport still accounts for a significantly smaller impact on the climate than the emissions from plastics that are incinerated, says Mattias Philipsson.
But soon the plastic will not need to be transported to the continent.
Within two years, Mattias Philipson hopes that the facility in Motala will have the capacity to wash and shred plastic packaging into new recycled plastic raw material.
– Our ambition is to end the entire cycle here in Motala, says Mattias Philipsson.
“A huge reduction in Sweden’s climate emissions”
Already this summer, a new part of the facility opens with improved technology, which will lead to more packaging being recycled instead of incinerated.
– This will mean a huge reduction in Sweden’s climate emissions. Then there will be super good incentives to make the small effort and source sorting, says Mattias Philipsson.
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