Varför återvinns inte fler plastförpackningar? En kartläggning av hinder för en ökad materialåtervinning av plastförpackningar i Sverige

Sammanfattning: The majority of plastic packaging is not being recycled today, but burned for energy recovery or sent to landfill. This leads to vast losses of recyclable material, as well as elevated emissions of greenhouse gases from the extraction of fossil oil needed to sustain the production of new plastics. To be able take effective measures to increase recycling, causes of the low recycling levels first have to be identified. The objective of this study was therefore to identify obstacles in the recycling process for plastic packaging, that results in plastic packaging being used for energy recovery instead of being recycled. An additional objective was to quantify the amounts of recycled plastic packaging. This was done through a literature review and it was found that the main obstacles were: 1) The majority of the plastic packaging is thrown in the residual waste instead of being sorted out for recycling. It was also found that the reasons to why the plastic packaging is thrown in the residual waste is poorly studied. 2) The supply of recycled plastic material is not matching the demand. This is mainly due to recycled plastics often having lower quality than newly produced plastics from fossil fuels. This is primarily a result of contamination of different materials and types of plastics in the recycled material. Further studies should therefore aim to develop and examine different measures for increasing the recycling levels for plastic packaging that target these obstacles as effectively as possible.