The EREMA Intarema series recycling machines are considerably large. The Intarema plastic recycling machine at the LIT Factory is approx. 20 meters in length.

The systems, however, can be considerably larger and several stories high.

Until recently,  a centrally located static control panel was used to operate recycling plants. In an effort to support ideal settings and optimize and commission non-centrally located plant sections, one must refer to the central operating panel.

Plastic is Versatile

We know one thing for sure: Plastic waste does not belong in the ocean, or in our environment. However, few people seem to realize that plastic is actually incredibly versatile. By separating the different types of plastic, it would be easier to recycle the 0.92 million tons of plastic waste that accumulates in Austria each year. This would truly benefit the environment!

R-Cycle, opens an external URL in a new window is a LIT Factory partner. The initiative aims to, for example, document packaging properties during production in order to make this information available to sorting and recycling process at the end of a product's life cycle. To this end, a digital product passport containing this product's recycling-relevant information has been created.

A total of 25 renowned partners in business and academia are working together to optimize the recycling process and ultimately avoid plastic waste in the environment. Funded by the Climate Ministry with €4 million, the new project has a total research budget of € 6.2 million and will run to March 2026.

The Objective

Plastic waste does not belong in our oceans or anywhere else in our environment for that matter. Plastic, however, is multi-faceted and in order to recycle better, we need to cleanly separate the different types of plastic. If we could do this, we could better recycle the 920,000 tons of plastic waste generated in Austria every year and significantly reduce the harm to the environment. The current recycling rate is Austria is only 26%, meaning we need to take action because the EU policy for plastics aims to attain a 55% recycling rate by 2030.