Insights From the Composition Analysis of Plastic Waste 2024

In May and June of 2024 The City of Copenhagen conducted a composition analysis on household collected plastic waste, with the purpose of providing a detailed overview of the collected household plastic waste in Copenhagen.

Sorting plant at ARC

Results from the plastic sorting analysis

With the Danish extended producer responsibility for packaging to come into force in 2025, the analysis had emphasis on the share of packaging in the fraction. The share of packaging out of the correctly sorted waste was about 2/3, of which approximately half was food packaging, including food and beverage cartons. About 20% was flexible plastic, which in this analysis is included in the non-food packaging category, and about 60% of the flexible plastics was made of LDPE.

A further layer of detail is shows that the food packaging mainly consists of trays and food and beverage cartons., while the non-food packaging consists mainly of flexible plastics.

Out of the total input of source separated household plastic waste, the share of reject for incineration and metals, i.e. the incorrectly sorted waste, was 19%.

$A pie chart in three layers illustrates the shares of packaging and product types out of the full amount of plastic and food and beverage cartons. In summary, the inner layer shows that 69% is packaging, the middle layer shows that 35% of the packaging is food packaging and outer layer shows that large plastic items constitute 23%, flexible plastic are 22%, food and beverage cartons are 12% and trays are 10% out of the total amount, while the remaining 33% consists of 10 other smaller fractions.$

How did we conduct the analysis?

The analysis was made on a sample of geographically representative batches with a total amount of 1,7 ton. The batches were first sorted on the automatic test sorting facility at Amager Resource Center (ARC) to pick out the polymers, and later hand sorted by product category to find a more detailed composition of the plastics. The results are compared to weekly random samples to ensure that the sample of the composition analysis is representative on a polymer level.

Wish to know more?

Circular Copenhagen

circular@kk.dk

Please contact us if you wish to have a copy of the report (in Danish). Besides the providing an overview of the composition of packaging and non-packaging in the plastic waste stream in Copenhagen, the report includes detailed information about the distribution of product types for each polymer.