Although processes are already in place to allow for the recycling of plastic, the efficiency of this procedure still has a lot of room for improvement. According to a recent study, around 84% of the content in blue waste bags can be directly recycled. However, this applies to only 22% of plastic waste brought to the country's recycling centres.
The content of blue bags can be sorted by a machine, which directly identifies the different subcategories. However, this work is conducted by hand at the recycling centres, which is less efficient in terms of time and accuracy.
Nevertheless, Minister for the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development Carole Dieschbourg (déi Gréng) is yet to be fully convinced of the merits of strengthening the automation of the sector. She still wants to evaluate the results from another pilot study, which tests the potential of the mechanism to identify and sort further subcategories.
Dieschbourg also emphasises the importance of reducing plastic waste altogether. Society will probably have to find a middle ground where less is used in the first place, and more is efficiently recycled later.
