Market
Plastic recycling is the process of recovering waste or scrap plastic and reprocessing these materials into other functional and practical products. Because almost all plastic is non-biodegradable, it must be recycled as part of the global efforts to reduce plastic?
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Sorema is proud to announce the achievement of the SOA Certification in Category OS14 – Classification VIII, the highest qualification level within this category under the Italian public?
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Engineers and product specialists who answer technical questions from readers. The answer comes back to you by e-mail; when we publish it, other readers benefit too.
Daniel WresnikUNTHA shredding technology
Daniel Wresnik, Head of Sales and Business Development BU Waste & Recycling in the DACH region at UNTHA, is a proven expert? Ask a question
Tom JansenTOMRA Recycling
With more than 20 years of experience in sensor-based sorting technologies, Tom Jansen is VP, Head of Segments at TOMRA Recycling, where? Ask a question
Dan FairestM&J Recycling
At M&J Recycling, my role as the UK & ROI Sales Manager centres on providing top-tier shredding solutions tailored to the waste? Ask a question
Laetitia PaveauPellenc ST
Laetitia is the Marketing and Communications Director at Pellenc ST. An engineer by training, she has spent over 20 years driving innovation? Ask a question
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What this market covers
A typical plastic recycling line combines sorting (manual and automated, including NIR and AI-driven optical sorters), size reduction (shredders and granulators), washing and decontamination, and finally extrusion or pelletizing to turn clean flake into recycled resin such as rPET, rHDPE or rPP.
PET (#1) and HDPE (#2) are the most widely recycled resins, with growing markets for rPP (#5) and rLDPE (#4). PVC (#3), polystyrene (#6) and mixed or multilayer plastics (#7) are harder to recycle and usually need more specialised technology.
Mechanical recycling shreds, washes and re-melts plastic into new pellets — the most common and cost-effective route for clean, single-resin streams. Chemical recycling breaks plastic down into base monomers or feedstock, which can handle more contaminated or mixed plastics but typically needs a larger capital investment.
Odour, colour consistency, residual contamination (labels, adhesives, other polymers) and moisture are the most common quality issues. Investing in washing, decontamination and sorting accuracy has the biggest impact on the quality of the recycled output.
