Mattias Philipsson is the CEO of Swedish Plastic Recycling, situated in the city of Motala, three hours south of Stockholm.
— We have expanded from zero employees in 2018 to 110 people now, he says. We’re financed by so-called packaging fees; every company or producer that is putting some kind of packaging on the Swedish market have an obligation to make sure it will be collected and recycled.
They do that by paying the mentioned fee. This has also helped to finance last November’s opening of Site Zero — the world’s largest plastic packaging sorting facility — together with bank loans and state aid from the Swedish government, which stands for about 20% of the investment.
— I’m proud and happy that everything has been going according to plan because this is a huge project — nobody has ever built such a plant before. Despite Covid, the war in Ukraine, and increasing metal prices, we almost made it on time and almost on budget.
Tell us more about the plant.
— One of the unique things is the capacity; we have the ability to receive 200,000 tons of plastic packaging each year. And we will probably be the largest (in the world) for a while though the general trend on the market is that those types of sorting plants are getting bigger and bigger, Philipsson explains, continuing,
— There are two other unique things about Site Zero:
— We are sorting out more types of plastics than any other plant on the market. Usually, a sorting plant in Europe, sorts out three or four types of plastics. Site Zero is sorting out 12 fractions.
— And also the efficiency. When we receive different plastics and different packaging, it’s very important that the plant actually identifies the right plastics and sorts them right. We have more sensors than any other plant in the market — about 60 — while a general one has three, four, or five.
What has the feedback been from the market?
— We’ve had a lot of media attention which makes us both proud and is an acknowledgement that we are doing the right thing. We have a lot of visitors and international visitors — today, for instance, I will welcome a TV team from France. So, there’s a lot of media buzz.
— What we can also see in the market is that other sorting plants that are being planned for look quite similar to Site Zero. That was the goal from the beginning — to show that it’s possible — and you cannot get any better acknowledgement than to see followers in the market.
So you’ve inspired other industry players?
— Absolutely.
”The only way to keep plastics in the circular economy is to be able to sort out each plastic type”
How?
— What I’m most proud of about Site Zero is that it reflects our philosophy about how plastic recycling should be. And what do I mean by that? Plastics are not one material. Just like metals, there are several types of plastics or polymers. In the packaging market, 10 different plastic types are usually used. The only way to keep plastics in the circular economy is to be able to sort out each plastic type, separately, and then recycle them separately. If you do that, you can recycle them again and again and again. Every time you mix different plastics, you do what’s called downcycling; it can’t become a packaging of the same quality again, so sooner or later, it has to go to a landfill or be incinerated. That’s typically a linear economy. To sort 12 fractions is a huge step towards making plastic packaging part of the circular economy.
Can you take us through the process after collecting the plastics from across Sweden? And what happens with it afterwards?
— As of today, we’re sorting the different plastic fractions. We are receiving the material and removing everything that is not plastic packaging. We then sort every type of packaging separately depending on what type of plastic it is. After sorting and packing each type of plastic, we bail it again and send it to the recyclers that are making the last step bringing it to, for instance, a granulate, which is used to make whatever product you wish.
— Some of those fractions have a value when we have sorted them out and we can sell them, while for some, we have to pay a fee for them to get recycled after the sorting step. That depends on the market situation and type of plastic, so it varies a lot. Our main competitor is a fossil-based raw material, so that also reflects very much on the price in the market for recycled plastics. We have to be competitive, like in all other markets.
— At the moment, we don’t have the capacity to recycle any big amounts in Sweden. We have a policy that everything should be recycled within the EU, so we are working closely with partners — mostly in Germany, the Netherlands, and other EU countries — where they have a (recycling) capacity today. Our aim is to bring recycling capabilities to Site Zero as well. We call it Phase 2, when we will be able to not only sort the different fractions but can also recycle them separately so that we will get even closer to creating a closed loop in Sweden.
What’s your view on bioplastics?
— We welcome it. It has the same molecule structure as fossil-based or oil-based plastics, so we will probably see it increase in the future, together with more recycling and, maybe, what’s called chemical recycling. That is a quite new process, there are a lot of plants being planned around the world, but there are still some challenges. In the future, it might be feasible and that would bring recycled plastic to virgin quality which will help to close the loop and decrease our dependence on fossil-based plastics.
Is chemical recycling the next big thing?
— No, I don’t think so. Mechanical recycling (as used by Site Zero and many others) is very resource-efficient and a lot of things have happened with that technology recently. We can achieve a very high quality with mechanical recycling. But there are different types of plastics, such as laminates, which are a mixture of different plastics that are very hard to recycle in a good way mechanically. I think that this can become the big role to play for chemical recycling in the future; to bring it to molecule level again and recycle it to become virgin quality. This is for the very tricky kind of plastics — not as the main recycling technology but as a compliment.
New innovations will obviously improve the recycling technologies.
— For sure. We are following various interesting projects very closely and are also cooperating with different actors and sending material to them to find new solutions together. From my perspective, I obviously hope every technology will evolve into something good and resource-efficient. But regardless, you always need to have an efficient sorting process before, since we always receive mixed materials — and 30% of it is not even plastic packaging but can be any kind of waste. We’ll always have to be a cleaning step before the next process.
— In Sweden, we have a lot of waste incineration plants that are very efficient and utilise energy out of what we call rejects. We also have a policy that every reject that we cannot sort out and recycle has to be incinerated in Sweden. We don’t want to send waste to any other part of the world.
Last year, Swedish National TV showed that only around 10% of the plastic in Sweden was recycled while the rest was burnt.
— Yes, our philosophy is of course to increase recycling rates, but also recycle it in the right way, so we are trying to do two things at a time. When it comes to household packaging, which is what we are receiving, they’re the most tricky ones because it’s often contaminated with food or other things. With Site Zero, we have created the conditions to be able to recycle 50% by 2025 — and we are not happy about that either. After 2025, we will try to become even better, because our vision is that every packaging should become part of the circular economy, and then we need to increase recycling rates above 50%. There’s an EU target of 50% in 2025 — but let’s not stop there.
You mentioned downcycling and we see a growing debate on the need to get rid of also recycled plastic, as part of lowering our dependence of plastics. What’s your view on that?
— The packaging industry is very well-regulated, since a lot of packaging also has food contact. As I mentioned, we’re cooperating with several universities on scientific projects. One of them is with Örebro University in Sweden for a two-year project to identify if there, for instance, are hazardous plastics on the market and how big of a problem it is. And what can we as a recycler do to handle that in the best way possible? There’s a lot of research to be done here.
”The cosmetic industry has to think about design for recycling”
Lastly, what are the keys for brands and industry players to make your job easier?
— There are challenges. To start with, if we talk about the cosmetic industry, there are often very small packaging. For obvious reasons, but that makes it generally harder for us. And since many things are quite small, it might be difficult to empty them, so there’s often leftovers in the packaging, which of course affects our process.
— Also, packaging is often about selling your product. What we can see from the cosmetic industry is that it’s often many materials blended with some parts in metal and some made of plastics, which also makes everything more challenging. Our ’dream packaging’ is one mono-material that is transparent with small labels. We totally understand that a packaging has to fulfil many functions but what I want to say is that the cosmetic industry really has to think about designing for recycling. We have a lot of visitors coming here and we have seen that it makes everything much easier if we, together with the producers, can develop the next generation of packaging.
”Our ’dream packaging’ is one mono-material that is transparent with small labels”
Site Zero’s capacity in numbers
Size: 60,000m2 (previous plant 15,000 sqm)
Sorting capacity: 12 types of plastic (comparable plants 3-4 types): rigid PP, rigid HDPE, flexible LDPE, flexible PP, transparent PET trays, transparent PET bottles, coloured PET bottles, EPS, PS, PVC, two grades of mixed polyolefin laminates, and metal and non-plastic rejects
Sorting efficiency: Up to 95 per cent of the received plastics can be sorted out and recycled in the next step
Sorting sensors: 60 NIR sensors (comparable plants have an average of 5 NIR sensors, previous plant 19 sensors)
Advanced control system: fully automated process, real-time optimization, artificial intelligence. The different parts of the plant influence and talk to each other, optimizing the sorting process
Reception capacity: 200,000 tons per year of mixed plastic packaging from households (previous plant 100,000 tons per year)
Sorting speed: 1000 packages per second, 42 tons per hour
