From beach chairs to umbrellas, the ‘oversights’ of the Spanish in the yellow container

Plastic bottles, canned or soft drink cans, aluminum foil, tetrabricks, coffee capsule, deodorant bottle. Did you know which of these containers goes into the yellow bin and which ones don’t? Spain has more than 385,000 of these containers distributed throughout the national geography, however they do not always receive the correct products.

“We have seen beach chairs, mobile phones, umbrellas,” says Patricia Ramos-Catalina Clemente, head of the Ecoembes technical office. These are known as “improper”. A visit to one of its 97 certifies this problem.

On the belts of the container classification plant in Colmenar Viejo (Madrid), beyond containers or plastics, you can see oranges, tree remains and clothing rolling. “Between 3 and 4 trucks go to the landfill every day,” highlights one of the plant managers. “One of them is clothing,” he adds. According to his data, “of 100 kilos that arrive, 40 of them are citizen errors,” explains Ramos-Catalina.

Garbage in the separation plant. /

Oscar Chamorro

A problem that is reflected in the annual figures for recycling plastic waste in Spain. According to the annual report of Cicloplast, the entity that brings together plastic producers and transformers, with data from the European Plastic Recycling and Recovery Organization (EPRO), Spanish households generated 930,000 tons of plastic, of which 616,282 tons were recycled.

Figure that refutes a study published in the magazine Sustainable Production and Consumption built with the numbers of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) in Spanish cities and municipalities 15.3% of plastic packaging is collected and 10.7 is recycled %.

the outward journey

Just over 40 kilometers north of Madrid, the Colmenar Viejo plant receives waste from containers from more than 76 municipalities that are part of the Northwest Commonwealth. “We are talking about 18,800 tons a year,” says Patricia Ramos-Catalina.

A constant transfer of trucks that arrive at the “unloading beach”. At this point, the waste is piled up waiting to be ‘introduced’ onto the plant’s belts to begin the first step for its future recycling.

Despite being a mechanized installation, the entire process is supervised by different workers in charge of correcting errors that technology is not yet capable of controlling. “In this way we prevent waste from entering the system and slowing down or spoiling the entire process,” highlights the manager at the Ecoembes technical office.

Worker guarding the garbage. /

Oscar Chamorro

Large fans, magnets and optical readers, these are the weapons used by Urbaser, the company that manages this center, to separate PET from PEAD (high-density polyethylene), metal containers, cardboard from bricks or PEBD (film).

Thanks to a scanner located on the acceleration belt, the system detects the transported materials and their position on the belt. Depending on the infrared wavelength, it determines the nature and color of the material, information that is processed by programmed software that selects the product to be separated.

Thus, during the journey through the conveyor belts, the waste is selected according to its composition. Large vacuum cleaners absorb the film, these readers can separate the cardboard from the tetrabricks from the plastic bottles. And, finally, some magnets remove the soda cans or containers from the chain to proceed to their subsequent recycling. “The operators monitor the entire process and if there is something that has not been selected during the chain and is likely to be recycled, it returns to the circuit,” explains Ramos-Catalina.

waiting for recycling

This is the first stage of packaging recycling, a journey that lasts 420 seconds in which everything is prepared to give them a second life. “Seven minutes is how long it takes for a container ready to be recycled to come in and out,” says one of the managers of the Colmenar Viejo plant.

After this fleeting qualification “it is the turn of the recyclers”, details the Ecoembes spokeswoman. At the entrance of the Madrid ship, bullets are crowded, large packages of these products, which “weigh about 200 kilos” ready for the second phase of the trip. “We are having some delays due to the truckers’ strike,” said those responsible.

Bales prepared for recycling. /

Oscar Chamorro

Third-party trucks “approved by Ecoembes” arrive for these heavy blocks, explains Patricia Ramos-Catalina. “We make sure that the process is sustainable and that the product is recycled,” she adds.

On its website, this non-profit organization details the requirements to be one of the recycling companies. “These contracts are auctioned to more than 400 approved recyclers,” they detail.

A new path to recycle packaging and return this raw material back to the consumption cycle.