Recycling plastics from residual municipal solid waste: Final report of the MSWPlast project

A vast majority of post-consumer plastics end up in the residual MSW destined for incineration, causing emissions and contributing to climate change, while also consuming fossil material resources. In addition, Finland struggles to meet the recycling targets set in legislation for plastic packaging waste. The MSWPlast project studied if industrial post-sorting of plastics from residual MSW could offer a solution for plastics recycling, that would complement the current separate collection system.

A large share of the plastics in residual MSW is plastic packaging waste, but it contains also other plastic items. In Finland it is estimated that the residual MSW contains more than 15 % plastics. However, little is known about the specific polymers present in the residual MSW. Different polymers are, in fact, different materials that need to be separated for recycling.

A key step of the project was the industrial sorting of 512 tons of residual MSW that enabled studying the composition of MSW plastics and the recyclability of the separated plastics. From the separated plastic waste, VTT successfully produced recycled plastic pellets and oriented films. The sorting trial also provided invaluable data for the development of models to evaluate the yield and efficiency of sorting facilities. The MSWPlast project further investigated how new systems for sorting and recycling could fit into our current recycling system.

The MSWPlast project demonstrated that plastics can be effectively separated from residual MSW and recycled into new products, offering a viable alternative to incineration. With the right investments in technology and with a supporting policy framework, industrial post-sorting offers a solution for recovering plastics from residual MSW. This would improve the recycling performance and provide valuable raw materials for the domestic plastic industry.

Correction [3.10.2025] to Figure 13 (also found in Appendix D, Fig. D5). The original figure presented values for CO2/t, the corrected figure displays the values correctly, as kgCO2/GJ.