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Between new regulatory targets, shifting figures across material streams, and a wave of new sorting technology, 2023 brought together several threads that will shape waste management for years to come.
Each year brings incremental changes to waste management – new regulations come into force, recycling rates shift, and new technology moves from pilot projects into commercial deployment. Looking at 2023 as a whole, a few of these threads stand out as particularly significant for where the sector is heading.
EU recycling targets continued to tighten across multiple waste streams in 2023, with packaging waste, electronic waste and textiles all subject to either existing targets that are becoming harder to meet as low-hanging fruit is exhausted, or new requirements coming into force. Recycling rates across member states remain highly uneven – some countries are well ahead of EU averages, while others continue to rely heavily on landfill or incineration for material that could in principle be recycled.
Different material streams are at very different stages of maturity. Glass and paper recycling are relatively well-established, with high collection and recycling rates in most of Europe. Plastics recycling, despite significant investment, continues to lag behind targets – partly due to the complexity of sorting mixed plastic waste into streams pure enough for recycling. Textiles and WEEE remain the least mature streams, with separate collection only recently becoming widespread and sorting capacity still being built out.
Across all of these material streams, the common thread in 2023 was a growing reliance on sensor-based sorting technology to close the gap between collection and genuine recycling. Optical sorting, increasingly supplemented by artificial intelligence, is what allows facilities to turn mixed waste streams into material pure enough to meet the quality requirements of recyclers and manufacturers. PICVISA's range of sorting technologies – spanning glass, plastics, textiles and metals – reflects this broader trend towards more capable, more adaptable sorting as the foundation for meeting increasingly ambitious recycling targets.
Get in touch with our team to discover how PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions can fit your recycling operation.