Across Europe, efforts have been made by governments and the industry to realize the potential of using high-quality recycling. This shows that PS recycling is effective and only improving across Europe as part of significant efforts to upgrade capacity.
Introduction
Across Europe, efforts have been made by governments and the industry to realize the potential of using high-quality recycling. This shows that PS recycling is effective and only improving across Europe as part of significant efforts to upgrade capacity. Please select the highlighted countries on the map for some of the most relevant ongoing recycling initiatives across Europe.
Sweden
It is one of the world leaders in plastic recycling – it has invested heavily in Site Zero, a facility which will use cutting-edge technology to recycle all plastic packaging from Swedish households, including polystyrene and EPS, and make plastics completely circular – without any CO2 emissions.
Austria
A strategic partnership of three industry players has launched an investment of 60 million euros* in a state-of-the-art sorting plant for lightweight packaging – including PS – in Ennshafen, Upper Austria. Equipped with the latest sensor technology, the plant is fully digitized and will have a sorting capacity of 100,000 tons per year, covering 50% of Austria’s lightweight packaging sorting capacity.
Netherlands
PSLoop is a pioneering project that successfully proved that solvent-based recycling technology can remove the legacy additives from EPS waste, allowing reuse and reducing CO2 emissions by 50%.
France
In France, the polystyrene value chain signed the Charte PS, a stepwise commitment aiming for 100% polystyrene packaging collecting and sorting by 2025. French producer responsibility organization (PRO) Citeo opened three sorting centers to ensure optimal sorting and recycling with over 90% material rate purity, and process 70,000 tonnes of plastic packaging annually.
Belgium
Indaver launched its Plastic2Chemicals (P2C) plant in the Port of Antwerp, to close the loop on PS yoghurt pots. Indaver launched its Plastic2Chemicals (P2C) plant in the Port of Antwerp, to close the loop on PS yoghurt pots. Capacity will be increased to 65,000 tons per year, collaborating with Plastics Europe members producing recycled styrenics plastics from the output of the plant. Other advanced recycling plants across Europe are in the pipeline to meet ambitious EU recycled content targets in food packaging.
Italy
New sorting plant in Turin closes the loop further for plastics, including PS. With an annual capacity of 100,000 tons, it is the largest of its kind in Italy. It integrates innovative solutions to automatically sort 17 types of plastics, aluminium, and ferrous materials, returning up to 80% of input materials to the recycling loop. Italian National Recycling Association of Plastic Recyclers and Regenerators’ (ASSORIMAP) 2023 annual report on mechanical recycling highlights the sector’s success in isolating and recycling non-foamed PS from municipal waste, with continued progress over the past two years.
Germany
The German Environmental Agency has found that the recycling rate for all plastic packaging in 2021 was 48.4%. In comparison, for PS household packaging waste, the study confirmed a post sorting recycling efficiency of 75%; it is surpassed only by EPS – with a recycling efficiency of 87.5%.
This shows that PS recycling is effective and only improving across Europe as part of significant efforts to upgrade capacity.
A 2024 UNEP report “Plastic Pollution Science” confirmed that EPS transport packaging is one of the few packaging formats being recycled at scale and in practice on a global level.