sorteringsanlæg

Sorteringsanlæg, or sorting plant, is a facility where mixed waste streams are separated into recoverable materials and residual fractions. The primary aim is to increase recycling rates, reduce reliance on landfilling, and meet regulatory and waste-management objectives. Typical inputs include municipal solid waste, commercial and industrial residuals, or construction and demolition waste, often arriving as a single stream or pre-sorted feed.

A sorting plant generally operates a mechanical process line that may include feeding, size reduction, screening to separate by size, magnetic separation to recover ferrous metals, eddy current separators for non-ferrous metals, air classifiers and optical sorters to identify plastics and paper, and final manual picking to improve purity. The sorted streams are baled or processed further for downstream reuse, such as paper and cardboard recycling, plastic resin recovery, metal recycling, glass recovery, or organic recovery via composting or anaerobic digestion. Residual material may go to energy recovery or landfill.

There are different configurations, including mechanical recycling facilities (MRFs) for municipal waste and lines tailored to single-stream or multi-stream recycling. Some facilities also integrate biological treatment to stabilize organic matter before disposal or energy recovery. The design and capacity of sorteringsanlæg vary, with throughputs ranging from a few tens to thousands of tonnes per day.

Challenges include contamination, variability in input quality, and energy use. Operators must comply with environmental, health, and safety standards and coordinate with local waste-management policies and producer-responsibility schemes.