Polystyrene proven to be one of the best sortable plastics in the waste stream

Tomra, under the umbrella of Styrenics Circular Solutions, has recently completed tests showing that polystyrene is made for both recycling and sorting.

With Tomra’s NIR sensor technology, post-consumer plastic waste was sorted in a multi-step process including initial sorting from post-consumer waste, grinding into smaller flakes, washing, drying, and flake sorting, and the resulting purity of polystyrene turned out to be higher than 99.9 per cent.

Jürgen Priesters, SVP for Circular Economy at Tomra, said: “Styrenic compounds have a unique signal that enable easy and very precise sorting, an advantage that some other polymers do not have.”

Sven Riechers, Vice President for Business Management Standard Products EMEA and INEOS Styrolution, said: “These findings on polystyrene sorting makes Styrenics a material of choice for a circular economy and confirms our statements that Styrenics are made for recycling like no other.”