3. Single-material recycling

3.1 Methods for sorting and purifying deposits

This is the key stage in single-material recycling, on which the degree of purity and the final characteristics of the regenerated material depend. In most cases, this involves separating plastics from other materials such as glass, sand, metals, paper and cardboard... but also separating plastics by family. Generally speaking, sorting plants deal with these two aspects through a cascade of unitary operations resulting in a flow of purified materials and a flow of by-products, considered as process waste and which must be eliminated (incineration, landfill, or even material recovery in certain cases). There are a relatively large number of sorting methods available, but only a limited number are currently applied, as some processes are...