Norway-based fully automated waste sorting plant maximises recovery rates with TOMRA sorters

The ROAF waste sorting plant, situated in Skedsmokorset, near Oslo, is a fully automated waste sorting plant featuring TOMRA’s optical sorters and ranks second in sorting municipal solid waste by volume in Norway.

Having abolished the separate collection of plastics in 2015, the facility has increased its recovery rates of organics and plastics while maximising its recycling efforts.

ROAF collects and sorts waste from seven surrounding municipalities, where plastics were formerly collected at the curbside separately from paper, cardboard and residual waste. Unfortunately, many recyclables still found their way into the household waste fraction and were thus incinerated. To optimise resource recovery and mitigate the negative impact of incineration, TOMRA and ROAF examined the household waste composition and came up with a new business model to introduce a new waste management approach for the municipalities served.

Mixed waste sorting drives up resource recovery

The new approach includes a change in the region’s waste management and collection practices and the construction of a new sorting facility. ROAF now operates a three-container waste collection system wherein inhabitants dispose of biowaste in green bags and throw it together with plastics and residues in the municipal solid waste container, which is collected by a ROAF truck and transported to the sorting centre. A second container gathers paper and cardboard whereas the third one is used to dispose of glass and metal packaging.

The second part of the new business model was the construction of the world’s first fully automated sorting plant for MSW. After a three-year period of extensive planning, German plant builder STADLER constructed the plant in just three months and was awarded the German-Norwegian business award for its efforts in 2014.

The trommels, bag openers, ballistic separators, eddy current separators, overhead magnets, and vibratory screens work in unison with TOMRA’s most advanced optical sorters. Sixteen AUTOSORT’s process 40 tonnes of waste per hour. From this, the units recover biowaste, paper, and plastics with high levels of accuracy.

Once the organics, along with the residues collected curbside, arrive at the sorting plant they are fed into the facility, where three of TOMRA’s AUTOSORT systems separate green bags from the remaining waste. These are sent to a biogas site where the organics are converted into biogas for refuelling the plant’s collection trucks and bio-fertilisers. The remaining waste bags undergo further sorting steps.

Different drum screens separate the materials by size before ballistic separators and 16 AUTOSORT’s undertake a much more precise differentiation by material type. Due to the sensor-based sorting units’ advanced technologies including NIR and VIS, five different types of plastics (LDPE, HDPE, PP, PET and mixed plastics) – as well as paper – can be accurately separated from the infeed material. Finally, magnets and eddy-current separators remove metallic fractions. All individual fractions generated are stored in bunkers and sold to European processors, who turn the materials into high-quality recyclates.

Process optimisation and the latest sorting technology has led to a considerable increase in the recovery of plastics and municipal solid waste. The capacity in 2021 reached 3,600 tonnes for plastics and 11,500 tonnes for biowaste.

Since the automation of the plant in 2014, manual sorting efforts are no longer required, and personnel could be allocated to other tasks within the company. ROAF now aims to build on its current achievements and the experience gathered to reach reuse and recycling rates of 70 per cent by 2030, as is complementary with EU targets.

Tom Roger Fossum, Technical Director at ROAF, said: “Since the beginning of our collaboration, we have been confident that we have chosen the right partners. Both TOMRA and STADLER have always been at hand and undertaken considerable efforts, using their synergies, and combining them with our local waste management experience to jointly realise the project. As results have shown, everything paid off.”

Oliver Lambertz, VP and Head of Business Development at TOMRA Recycling, added: “I am accompanying the project right from the start and could see how initial thoughts and trials turned into a ground-breaking best-practice project. What we now see is an optimised waste management system, making the separate collection of plastics in this case redundant. At the same time, we could increase recovery rates and take most of our resources. Actually, very little is lost.”

TOMRA’s contribution to system change

The system may not be compatible in all countries or regions due to non-homogenous infrastructures, and its success would not be such without the proper technology. Making a difference and enabling change requires smooth and targeted collaboration, a common goal, and vision. The Norwegian waste management company pursued the vision to level up recycling rates and exploit the full value of resources before they are lost.

To turn its ambition into reality, choosing the right partners was crucial, as Fossum concluded: “Our goal was to automate waste sorting and optimise our waste management system considerably. We have been working with TOMRA for ages and have always been convinced of their technology, expertise, and service. They go the extra mile, partner to find the best solution, and support its implementation and ongoing process optimisation. For us, there was no other way.”