2023-11-28 07:11:00
In the Walloon region, 90% of the contents of our PMC bags (plastic, metal packaging and beverage cartons) are sorted for recycling. Each year, via our PMC bags, 23 kg of waste are recycled per year and per resident. The RTL info teams followed the progress of our blue bags.
It is in the street that the journey of our PMC bags begins, on their long route to recycling. In Lodelinsart, for example, the harvest is organized several times a month. And one observation: the blue bags have expanded, and their volume continues to increase. “There are more and more plastics, people are sorting more and more, so we are making more and more trucks”remarks Christophe, Tibi agent, the intermunicipal waste management company in the Charleroi region.
The PMC bags then go to one of the five sorting centers in Belgium. Here towards Couillet the Valtrisse installations, where the trucks follow each other almost non-stop.
In this center, nearly 45,000 tonnes of waste are sorted each year. This amounts to 900 tonnes per week. In summer, there are 10% more bags. Inside our bags: 55% plastics, 20% metal packaging, 5% beverage cartons and 20% residues. But where do they come from? For the plastics in our bottles, our pots, our bags. The metals come from cans, cans and aerosols. And for the last category, tetrapacks are targeted.
Throughout the 3 km of the sorting line, this waste is separated. Steel removed using magnets and aluminum using magnetic fields. “It’s a machine that magnetizes aluminum”explains Thomas Dalla-Riva, manager at Valtis. “At the end of the conveyor, there is a pole wheel which has reverse polarity which allows the aluminum to be ejected into a second compartment.”
Our waste becomes objects again
For the following steps, optical sorting is carried out. Each plastic is analyzed. “There is an infrared ray which allows us to detect the type of material or the color”continues Thomas Dalla-Riva. “At the end of the conveyor there are compressed air nozzles which allow either to retain the material or to eject it.”
The pace here is frantic: two bags are sorted per second, 24 hours a day. The last selection is still made by the man. In the end, 90% of your bag will be sorted to be recycled.
What happens to our PMC waste? “It can be the recycling of a bottle to a new bottle, it can be the recycling of aluminum which will make it possible to make other objects like bicycle frames, the recycling of steel which will make it possible to manufacture other steel objects…”details Philippe Teller, administrator of Valtris.
In total, 16 different materials are sorted. They will all be recycled and some will become what we call “bullets”.
These bales made of transparent plastic bottles are then found at Filao, a recycling company, Filao. “Sorting, crushing, washing, over-sorting of crushed materials and ultimately the exclusion of unwanted materials”says Benjamin Rousche, director of Filao
Complex processes which follow one another to ultimately obtain plastic beads which come from our bottles… and will become so again. “These balls will be sent to our partner so that they can become bottles again”explains Benjamin Rousche.
From our PMC bags, 23 kg of waste are recycled per year and per resident. Waste that becomes raw material again, a cycle that repeats itself.
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