Source of recycled plastics
In total, about 30,350 tonnes of plastics are recovered from waste electrical and electronic equipment in Austria each year. It is primarily recovered from WEEE, with a small amount also coming from vehicle batteries. Using state-of-the-art sorting technology – such as near-infrared spectroscopy – it is possible to produce unmixed plastics again (see https://mgg-polymers.com/de/).
Further information:
- www.seg-online.de/index.php/de/rueckproduktion-de/rohstoffveredelung-stufe-3/kunststoffaufbereitung
- www.sesotec.com/emea/en/products/groups/recycling-sorting-systems-with-chute
- www.tomra.com/en/sorting/recycling
- https://redwave.com/loesungen/recycling/kunststoff
These unmixed plastics can be remelted and processed into new products. The sorted recovered mass of plastics of about 30,350 t corresponds e.g. a mass of around 6.1 million simple garden armchairs. Due to the ever increasing proportion of plastics in electrical appliances, the recycling of these devices is becoming increasingly important.
The graph below provides an overview of how much plastic is recycled from each of the five collection and processing categories for the collection of waste electrical and electronic equipment.
| Plastics | Mass [t] | Proportion [%] |
|---|---|---|
| Large electrical appliances | 9.717 | 32,0 |
| Small appliances and devices | 14.963 | 49,3 |
| Display devices | 1.926 | 6,3 |
| Refrigerators and freezers | 2.851 | 9,4 |
| Device batteries | 166 | 0,5 |
| Vehicle batteries | 720 | 2,4 |
| Total | 30.344 | 100,00 |
Source of recovered plastics (2022 data)
Source of recovered plastics (2022 data)
Recycling processes for plastics
Recycled plastics (© MBA Polymers, Kematen, 2018)
Only a very small proportion of plastics from WEEE are contaminated with banned brominated flame retardants. These contaminated plastics must be sorted out and sent for thermal utilization or treatment. The vast majority of non-polluted plastics from WEEE can be returned to the recycling cycle.
The plastics group is being reclaimed from the categories of bulk and small electrical household appliances, refrigerators and screens, and from vehicle batteries.
In the course of recycling, the collected devices of these categories are crushed. The ferrous and non-ferrous metals are separated and reused as valuable secondary raw materials.
From the plastic-rich residual fraction, it is possible to recycle pure plastics as secondary raw materials by using state-of-the-art sensor-based sorting technologies (for example, MGG Polymers, Amstetten, https://mgg-polymers.com/de/). These unmixed plastics can be remelted and processed into new products.
Plastics recycling from old electrical appliances is therefore so expensive, since there are many different plastics in the devices. The most common are ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer), PS (polystyrene), PE (polyethylene), PP (polypropylene) and PVC
(polyvinyl chloride).