Recycling of Mixed Flexible Plastics

Since 2016, Copenhagen has taken part in the European funded project FORCE, which aims to establish new, circular business models for plastics, metals, food waste, and wood.

Copenhagen is the lead partner for the plastic waste activities of the project. The focus is explicitly on developing new business models for the use of post-consumer flexible plastic waste. The Danish partners of the project are Letbek A/S, Dansk Rotations Plastic ApS, Aage Vestergaard Larsen A/S, and the Danish Technological Institute.

As part of the project, the partners have conducted several sorting, washing, and production tests using plastic waste collected at the households in Copenhagen. The results show that the flexible plastic waste is definitely recyclable and can be turned into raw materials suitable for many types of production, incl. rotational molding, injection molding, and extrusion.

While half of the tested product applications would be difficult to produce with an economic gain under the current framework’s conditions, others seem to already have a viable business model, if the raw materials used in the project were to be produced on a large-scale in Denmark. This is good news for the development of a market for secondary raw materials in Denmark.