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Recycled plastic only has a market if two things line up: the sorting technology has to deliver a clean enough stream, and the products being designed have to be willing to use it.
The market for recycled plastics depends on more than collection rates – it depends on whether the recycled material that comes out the other end of a sorting line is good enough, in terms of purity and consistency, for manufacturers to actually use it in new products.
This is where sorting technology plays a decisive role. Optical sorting systems that can separate plastics by polymer type, colour, and even by additional characteristics like multilayer composition, directly determine the quality of the recycled flake or pellet that reaches manufacturers. The better the sorting at this stage, the wider the range of products that recycled plastic can realistically be used in – from packaging through to more demanding technical applications.
On the other side of the equation is ecodesign – designing products and packaging from the outset with their eventual recycling in mind. Trends in ecodesign increasingly favour mono-material structures, easily separable components, and packaging that's compatible with existing sorting infrastructure. When products are designed this way, the plastics recovered from them are more likely to be suitable for high-value recycling rather than downcycling, closing the loop more effectively and giving recycled plastics a genuine second life in new products.
Explore our solutionsGet in touch with our team to discover how PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions can fit your recycling operation.