- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- Maresca hails Chelsea's 'fighting' spirit after draw with 10-man Forest
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Arshdeep, Chakravarthy help India hammer Bangladesh in T20 opener
- Lewandowski's quickfire hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Toddler among 4 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
Sweden aims to boost plastic recycling with giant plant
Discarded crisp bags, ketchup bottles and Tupperware containers speed along conveyer belts at a massive high-tech sorting plant dubbed "Site Zero", which Sweden hopes will revolutionise its plastic recycling.
Infrared lights, lasers, cameras and even artificial intelligence are used to sort the piles of plastic waste, Mattias Philipsson, CEO of Swedish Plastic Recycling, a non-profit organisation owned by the plastic industry, explains as he gives a tour of the plant.
Located outside the town of Motala, some 200 kilometres (124 miles) southwest of Stockholm, the site has been in operation since late 2023 and is described by the organisation as "the world's largest and most modern facility for plastic recycling".
Capable of processing 200,000 tonnes of waste a year, the fully automated plant can isolate 12 different types of plastic, compared to only four in conventional facilities.
Its operator hopes upcoming EU legislation requiring new packaging to include a certain amount of recycled plastic will give a boost to the recycling industry.
"We receive all the collected plastic packaging which people have sorted in Swedish households," Philipsson told AFP at the site, adding that they "have the capacity to handle the equivalent of all of Sweden's plastic waste."
Thousands of plastic items make their way through an intricate maze of different machines which identify and separate the items into distinct categories, called "fractions."
On one of the conveyor belts, infrared light is used to scan the packaging as it zooms past, and a strong blast of air whooshes the pieces in different directions depending on the type of plastic.
- Room for improvement -
Among other things, the facility is able to sort out PVC and polystyrene, two fractions that have not previously been able to be reused in new products as such.
"The idea is to be part of a circular economy and to reduce the use of fossil fuels," Philipsson says.
"With our old sorting plant, over 50 percent of the plastic packaging was eventually incinerated because it couldn't be sorted. Now it's less than five percent," he adds.
The Scandinavian country is not at the top of the class when it comes to plastic recycling.
In 2022, only 35 percent of plastic waste was recycled, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the EU average of 40 percent.
The incineration of plastic waste, which is used to produce both heat and electricity, accounts for about seven percent of Sweden's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the agency.
"Swedes are good at recycling in general -- metals, paper and glass -- because we have been doing this for a long time and have an industry that wants the paper for example," EPA expert Asa Stenmarck told AFP.
But "when it comes to plastics we are not so good," she added.
"A lot is not even sorted, which is a big problem and this goes for both households and businesses. So we really need to work on sorting."
- More waste coming -
Recycled plastic is still struggling to be widely adopted, as it is on average 35 percent more expensive than newly produced plastic.
Stenmarck noted that some of the fractions sorted by Site Zero are still unusual on the recycling market.
"So in a sense, it's kind of brave since there probably aren't customers yet," she explained.
Stenmarck said one way of speeding up its adoption is to legislate, and noted this was underway in Europe with the new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
The 27 EU member states agreed on March 4 that plastic packaging must contain between 10 and 35 percent recycled content, depending on whether it is used for food, by 2030.
"It will be a welcome game-changer for the market," Philipsson told AFP, adding that "the only way to achieve that is through efficient sorting."
Still, the OECD anticipates that the amount of plastic packaging will triple by 2060.
Some environmentalists argue that increased recycling does not address the root problem.
"We have the feeling that this talk of an improvement in the technical performance reinforces the idea that we can continue (making plastic), that there is nothing to worry about," Henri Bourgeois-Costa, a plastic waste expert at the Tara Ocean Foundation, told AFP.
"The challenge with these plastics is not to sort them better, to better recycle them... The challenge is to replace them and eliminate them," he added.
Other projects based on the Site Zero model are being designed elsewhere in Europe, with two in Germany and one in Norway.
O.Karlsson--AMWN