Billion investment in plastic recycling in Sweden

The facility will be able to recycle all plastic packaging from Swedish households and make plastics circular – completely without any CO2 emissions.

Swedish Plastic Recycling is investing a SEK 1 billion in the state-of-the-art facility that will be completed in 2023. It is the existing facility in Motala, which is already the most efficient in Europe, that is now being developed with next-generation technology.

„We are doubling our capacity and will be able to handle 200,000 tonnes of plastic packaging per year. This creates the conditions needed for receiving and eventually recycle all plastic packaging from Swedish households,“ says Mattias Philipsson, CEO of Swedish Plastic Recycling.

Thanks to cutting-edge technology it will be possible to recycle practically all types of plastic. Today the facility can manage four types of plastic – in the future Site Zero will make it possible to sort and recycle twelve different types. Any small parts of plastic that remain after the sorting process are separated to be sent to chemical recycling, or to become new composite products. At Site Zero, zero packaging goes to incineration.

Site Zero will be completely climate neutral with zero emissions. The facility is powered by renewable energy, and the small amount of plastic and other waste that cannot be recycled will be sent to energy recovery without climate emissions, so-called CCS (Carbon Capture Storage). There are also plans to produce renewable energy by covering the building’s large flat roof with solar panels.

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket) also contributes with a financing of just over SEK 180 million through the climate investment aid programme known as Klimatklivet.