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When a UN report frames plastic as an avalanche, it's not just a figure of speech – it's a description of how quickly production has outpaced the systems meant to deal with it afterwards.
The United Nations report "The State of Plastics" sets out a stark picture of how plastic production and consumption have grown over recent decades, and the gap that has opened up between how much plastic societies generate and how much of it is actually recovered or recycled.
A central point in the report is the scale of single-use, disposable plastic in everyday consumption – packaging, bags, bottles and other items designed to be used once and discarded. This category of plastic is particularly difficult to manage at end of life: it's produced in enormous volumes, often contaminated by the products it contained, and in many cases not designed with recycling in mind at all.
The report's recommendations point in two complementary directions: reducing reliance on disposable plastics where alternatives exist, and strengthening recycling systems for the plastic that continues to be used. On the recycling side, that means better collection, but also better sorting – technology capable of separating plastics by type and quality at the scale needed to handle the volumes the report describes, so that more of what's collected can genuinely be turned back into useful material rather than ending up in landfill or incineration.
Explore our solutionsGet in touch with our team to discover how PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions can fit your recycling operation.