Belgian Sorting Facilty : New PMD Sorting Facility to Increase Recycling Capacity
Waste treatment company Indaver finished the construction of a brand-new PMD sorting facility in Willebroek, Belgium, last week. The company already had a PMD sorting facility on that site. However, with the introduction of the ‘New Blue Bag’, which will be implemented in phases throughout the whole of Belgium, every citizen will be supplying 8 kilograms more PMD each year than before. To be able to treat this greater amount, and to be able to sort more materials, it was necessary to invest in a new facility. The new facility is three times as big as the previous one, and will treat the PMD waste of around 3 million residents each year.
Indaver is a European player in the domestic and industrial waste sector and since 1995 has been sorting PMD waste in Willebroek into 8 pure material streams, ready for recycling. With the introduction of the New Blue Bag, the number of different types of plastic that can be supplied in the bag, has been extended. From ‘plastic bottles and containers’ to ‘all plastic household packaging’. As a result, each resident will supply on average 7 to 8 kilograms more PMD waste than before.
In September 2019, Indaver initiated the construction of a completely new facility to be able to treat these larger amounts of PMD waste into 14 pure material streams. The new facility is three times as big as the previous one and over the next 9 years it will treat 60,000 tonnes of PMD waste each year, from around 3 million residents. The capacity can be further extended if necessary.
Construction of the sorting hall and installing the machines was completed a few weeks ago, but last week the facility had its first test run with PMD waste. During this phase, which will last until the end of February, all of the machines will be tested and adjusted. This is a vital phase in the process. Each of the machines must be meticulously adjusted to achieve the particularly high grade of purity expected by Fost Plus, a Belgian private sector initiative that promotes, coordinates and finances selective collection, sorting and recycling of household packaging waste, and which is part of this project. Supplying pure mono-streams is the only way to make high-quality recycling possible in the next step. In the new sorting facility, the PMD will be sorted into 14 separate streams and in time, maybe even more.
With the introduction of the New Blue Bag in 2019, Fost Plus launched a call for projects for five new high-tech sorting centres to treat the additional PMD waste, approximately 90,000 tonnes extra a year. Indaver’s facility is the first to be up and running and ready to start test runs for treating the New Blue Bag. This build represents an investment of 35 million euros.
“Manufacturers in the circular economy want to reuse raw materials on the condition that they are just as good and safe as the original material. We are making this possible and want to set the pace for the sector.” says Indaver CEO Paul De Bruycker. In this new facility we are creating value from the packaging waste that is supplied to us and protecting the materials loop from contamination. We are thus making the necessary switch from a linear to a circular economy. This modern, high tech facility fits in perfectly with our treatment portfolio to achieve that.”
In the New Blue Bag, packaging such as salad bags, mushroom containers, or the plastic foil around multipacks of water and milk can now be recycled. The sorted fractions are then taken off for recycling in Belgium and neighbouring countries. Today, 75% of the household packaging waste that Fost Plus collects is recycled in Belgium. With the announcement that three new recycling contracts are being introduced on our own soil, that figure will only increase further over the next few years.
“Good recycling starts with good sorting, says Patrick Laevers, managing director at Fost Plus. “Thanks to a uniform collection system, with uniform sorting messages for residents, we make this as easy as possible for citizens. That way, they can make a concrete contribution to the creation of a circular packaging economy. The opening of this new sorting centre is proof of our highly-effective eco-system. The new technologies that are being integrated, also allow us to look ahead to the packaging mix of tomorrow. This is a great achievement that we are very proud to be a part of."