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Waste-to-energy and material recycling aren't competitors so much as two parts of the same hierarchy – energy recovery is what's left for material that sorting can't recover.
PICVISA attended the First Forum on the Use of Waste Energy, held in Madrid, an event bringing together perspectives on how energy can be recovered from waste streams as part of a broader waste management strategy.
Waste-to-energy sits within a wider hierarchy of waste management options, generally positioned below material recycling – the priority is to recover materials for reuse wherever possible, with energy recovery applied to the fraction that can't realistically be recycled. From this perspective, the role of sorting technology is closely connected to how much waste ends up in the energy recovery stream in the first place: the more effectively materials like plastics, metals and glass are separated for recycling, the smaller and more residual the remaining fraction becomes.
Forums like this give companies across the waste management chain – from sorting technology providers to energy recovery operators – a chance to discuss how these different stages fit together, and where improvements in one area, such as sorting accuracy, can have knock-on effects for the others.
Get in touch with our team to discover how PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions can fit your recycling operation.