MSW glass recovery

2015 marked an important change in Spain's recycling landscape: tonnes of recycled glass gained added value thanks to a new recovery process applied to municipal solid waste (MSW).

Traditionally, glass recovery has relied heavily on dedicated collection – the green glass containers familiar from household separation. Recovering glass from MSW instead means extracting it from the broader mixed waste stream, after it's already been combined with other materials. Glass recovered this way tends to be more contaminated and harder to separate, which is exactly the kind of challenge optical sorting technology is suited to addressing – identifying and separating glass even when it arrives mixed with a wider range of other materials.

Opening up MSW as a source of recoverable glass effectively expands the total pool of glass that can be recycled in Spain, on top of what's already captured through dedicated collection – an additional recovery pathway that adds value to material that would otherwise have been lost to landfill or incineration along with the rest of the residual waste.

Discover ECOGLASS for glass sorting