Recycling
PMD

The P in PMD: what happens to your plastic packaging?

 

You separate out all your plastic packaging and put it in the blue PMD bag. This is collected from your home – practical and super convenient! But what actually happens to all that plastic packaging afterwards? 

Don't just call it plastic

A wide range of plastic packaging goes into your PMD bag, as you're sure to have noticed. Plastics can be soft or hard, transparent or opaque, matt or gloss, in all the colours of the rainbow. So don't just call it plastic. There are many different types, each with its own uses and composition. That also means they cannot simply be recycled together.

sorteercentrum

Did you know that your PMD ends up on a sorting conveyor of no less than 5 kilometres long? i

Off to the sorting centre!

Your PMD bag starts by going to a sorting centre where the materials are carefully separated. This is all done in Belgium, by the way: five sorting centres have been built here specially for PMD bags.

At the sorting centre, the bags are torn open and your packaging materials end up on a large sorting conveyor. They then pass through several stages. The sorting machines use the latest technologies to automatically recognise and remove all the materials and packaging.
 

Eleven plastic material streams

Sorting out your PMD bag results in as many as 16 separate material streams. That's already a lot more than the three letters in PMD. The M stands for metal packaging, which means three materials: steel, aluminium and small aluminium items such as drink capsules. Then you have the D, the drinks cartons. The P? That stands for plastic packaging. But not all Ps are the same! In fact, there are 11 different types of plastics that are separated at the sorting centre.

The first type is drinks bottles made from PET. These are separated into clear, blue, coloured and opaque streams. PET trays and bowls are kept separate because they have a slightly different composition. The remaining hard plastics are sorted into four streams: (high density) polyethylene or HDPE, polystyrene, polypropylene and mixed plastics. Finally, soft plastics – mainly films and bags – are also sorted into two streams: polyethylene and other films. Last of all, a small residual proportion is left over, which cannot be recycled any further.

 

trommelzeef in het sorteercentrum van Indaver

Once the blue bags have been torn open, all the packaging moves along the conveyor belt towards the drum screens, where large pieces of film are removed.

Korrels van HDPE

These granules were once plastic containers made from HDPE, such as bottles used for shower gel, detergent, sun cream etc.

Ready for recycling.

The next step, of course, is to give that plastic packaging a new life. Once it has been sorted, it is pressed into large bales that go to specialised recycling plants. These are then washed and ground up into pure and ready-to-use flakes or granules. That is the perfect basic raw material for making new products.
 

You will definitely see it again

The applications are virtually endless: lots of new bottles and packaging, of course, but it could also be turned into coat racks, flower pots or even street furniture. By the way, did you know that the blue PMD bags themselves are recycled too? Increasingly, the recycling is taking place in Belgium. So there is a good chance that you will see that packaging you have sorted out at home again, in your local supermarket or corner shop!

De plastic materiaalstromen in de blauwe zak