AALBORG UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING
JOINT EUROPEAN MASTER IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES: CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
HOUSEHOLD PLASTIC PACKAGING WASTE COLLECTION SYSTEMS IN AALBORG
Source: http://ecoopportunity.net/2011/07/plastic-the-next-great-brand-challenge/plastic-waste/
WASTE MANAGEMENT
PROJECT GROUP NUMBER 2
September 2013 – January 2014
Household Plastic Packaging Waste
Collection Systems in Aalborg
Aalborg
University
Name of program
Waste Management
Department name
Skibbrogade 5
9000 Aalborg
September 2013 – January 2014
Abstract
Group Number 2
Camilo Salamanca
Congcong Wu
Hoseung Jeung
Kostiantyn Hnennyi
Supervisor
Martin Lehmann
martinl@plan.aau.dk
Waste management represent an important
challenge to cities worldwide. European countries
are implementing various strategies to fulfil the EU
demands regarding better alternatives for waste
disposal. Most of these demands are based on the
EU Waste Hierarchy, which gives priority to Reduce,
Reuse and Recycle waste rather than incineration
and landfill.
The City of Aalborg is called to fit these demands as
well as national demands. Currently, the city lacks a
plastic waste collection system whereas in cases
such as Copenhagen, and cities in the UK, Germany,
Netherlands and Sweden plastic waste collection
systems have already been implemented.
The present study consists of a set of
methodologies that include a literature review of
cases were plastic waste collection systems were
successfully established as well as two interviews
with relevant stakeholders and a questionnaire
survey directed to understand the position of
citizens towards plastic waste collection systems.
Copies: 6
Pages: 86 incl. reference list and appendixes
Appendixes: 2
The content of this report is freely available, but publication (with references) may only happen with authorisation from the
authors.
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
Management of municipal waste has been one of the fundamental missions of city governance.
Historically, public health problems arising from waste has been an essential issue for human lives in
cities and attracted attentions of urban planning. Population in cities have been ever growing for many
years, and amount of waste produced per person is increasing at the same time (UNHABITAT, 2010). As
awareness about environmental protection has developed in the last few decades, movements for
managing waste in a way that affects less impacts on natural surroundings around human settlements
have been arising. More recently, as Climate Change becomes a key issue around the globe, more
cautious care for the impacts from waste management has been needed (Bogner et al., 2007). Materials
in waste that are treated or discarded in its management system originally come from economic cycles.
Those materials are also resources that can be used again in production of various products. When
properly treated, fractions of waste such as organics can be used as a source of renewable energy
(Pathiyamattom et al., 2010). Considering these facts, this study examines problems encountered by
municipal waste management in Aalborg, Denmark and suggests solutions for them.
Among European countries, Denmark generates the highest amount of waste per capita (Eurostat, 2013).
The incineration rate of household waste is 56 %, especially 75 % with organic waste, paper, cardboard,
glass, wood, plastic and metal waste out of them. In 2012, the total waste generated from households
was 2,399,000 tons with the second highest waste contributors after the building and construction
sector. This has been the highest figure in Europe (IPTS, 1999), and it causes enormous amount of
materials to be discarded without further use. More important thing is that only 36% of household
waste was recycled which is significantly low, compared to the 87% recycling rate of the waste from the
building and construction sector (The Danish Government, 2013).
Eurostat, an organisation for research and provision of statistical information in Europe, defines
municipal waste for uniform understanding around Europe as follows:
“Municipal waste is mainly produced by households, though similar wastes from sources such as
commerce, offices and public institutions are included. The amount of municipal waste generated
consists of waste collected by or on behalf of municipal authorities and disposed of through the waste
management system (ETC/SCP, 2013; Eurostat, 2011).”
As the definition suggests, a major source of municipal waste is households. Also, as a considerable
portion of waste from households are not recycled but incinerated. According to the waste hierarchy,
this is an undesirable situation due to its intense environmental impacts and low resource efficiency.
The European Union defined the waste hierarchy as a basic principle in waste management and stated
that reducing, reusing and recycling (3R) shall be prioritized over incineration and landfilling practices
(Directive 2008/98/EC). Therefore, municipal authorities that collect and dispose of the waste from
households need to establish systems by which reduction, reuse and recycling of household waste are
promoted.
A study by Riber et al. (2009) investigated fractions of waste from household before collected by waste
management authorities. The study indicates that plastic waste was the third largest portion of the
waste from households. According to PlasticsEurope (2013), 67% of the total amount of plastic waste
generated in Europe is from plastic packaging. Currently, the deposit-return system collects bottles and
cans that contain beer, carbonated drinks and mineral water. In 2011, the return rates of packaging with
the deposit-return system was 89 % (Dansk Retursystem A/S), which was very high, and hence kept out
of the waste collection by municipal authorities. However, this system covers only containers, and the
rest types of plastic packaging is not returned by this system. The EU has set a goal of implementing
separate waste collection systems for paper, metals, glass and plastics in all Member States by 2015
(Directive 2008/98/EC). Plastic packaging waste acquires major attention, because it is not collected in a
separate system in Denmark and a producer responsibility for packaging is missing. (Plastic ZERO, 2012).
Recycling of plastic packaging waste does not reduce generation of the waste at source. However, as
plastics are produced from unrenewable source of petroleum, low recycling rate of plastic waste leads
to further loss of resource and emission of greenhouse effect gas. It has been verified that mechanical
recycling of plastic waste has larger environmental benefit than landfilling and incineration in terms of
natural material depletion and energy use. This is mainly by avoiding use of virgin material (Michaud et
al., 2010). An economic study in European policies for packaging waste (Kjær et al., 2012) identified that
production of packaging per unit consumption in Denmark is already very low. Increase in plastic
packaging waste recycling is a low hanging fruit that can bring about improvement to resource efficiency
more easily than waste prevention.
In the city of Aalborg, the study area of this project, recycling rate of household waste is 39 % and
incineration rate is 58 %. Especially, collection facilities provided by the municipal waste collection
authority for household plastic waste are not accessible enough in the household area, and this works as
a factor that hinders the recycling rate from increasing.
In this project, different plastic collection which are successfully being operated in other cities in Europe,
are presented to stakeholders in the municipal waste management, and possible alternatives or changes
to the collection system of Aalborg are developed. Afterwards, opinions of citizens in Aalborg about the
alternatives to current waste collection system are studied in order to explore further developments
that would live up to demands of the citizens. Based on results of this study, changes to collections
schemes in Aalborg for better use of plastic waste as resource are suggested in the last part.
In following chapters, background and factors of the problem concerning recycling of household plastic
packaging waste are discussed more in detail.
1.2. Challenges and demands of municipal waste management in the European Union
In this chapter, figures about waste generation and treatment in European countries and how the
European Union tackles resource issues in waste management are presented. In most European
countries, the amount of municipal waste generation per capita is increasing. Only a few exceptional
countries such as Norway, Belgium and Slovakia showed drastic decreases in waste generation. However,
in Denmark, the increase rate has been very high in the last decade (Figure 1). The percentages of
landfilled plastic waste are remarkably low in European nations where landfill are banned. However,
high dependency in incineration of plastics are apparently observed and more effort in increasing rate of
plastic recycling is needed (Figure 2). As a result, the European Parliament legislated relevant regulations
in the form of directive so that Member States comply with them by national legislation and strategies
at their own discretion.
Targets in the waste management in Europe (Directive 2008/98/EC)
The European Union has put considerable efforts in legislation to manage waste in environmental and
socio-economically sustainable ways. Directive 2008/98/EC, notably known as the Waste Framework
Directive, has been in force since 2008 to provide new legal frameworks and strategies in European
waste management systems. Especially, the revised Directive emphasises on the need for European
countries to promote waste prevention and recycling in accordance with the waste hierarchy defined in
it. In addition to protection of the environment and human health ensured by previous Directives of the
European Union on waste, the Directive has a serious consideration on improving efficiency of resource
use (Directive 2008/98/EC).
Figure 1. Municipal waste generated by country in 1995, 2002 and 2009, sorted by 2009 level (kg per capita)
Source: Blumenthal, 2011
Figure 2. Treatment of post-consumer plastics waste 2012 by EU-27+2
Source: Plastic Europe, 2013
Waste Hierarchy
The most notable regulation established by the Waste Framework Directive is prioritisation among the
measures of waste prevention and management. The Directive states, “The following waste hierarchy
shall apply as a priority order in waste prevention and management legislation and policy”:
(a) prevention;
(b) preparing for re-use;
(c) recycling;
(d) other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and
(e) disposal.
In line with the application of the waste hierarchy, Member States are liable to consider socio-economic
impacts, technical feasibility and protecting the environment and resources in policy decisions on waste
(Directive 2008/98/EC).
Waste Prevention
Waste prevention, positioned at the top priority in the waste hierarchy, has been acknowledged to be
the most effective and important measure in reducing impacts on natural resource security (Somerset
Waste Board, 2012). The Waste Framework Directive defines waste prevention as “measures taken
before a substance material or product has become waste” (Directive 2008/98/EC) and thereby reducing
the quantity and adverse impacts of waste. Examples of waste prevention measures in production
design, consumption and economic instruments are suggested by the Directive.
Although targets in waste prevention are stated in the Directive as to formulate action plans and
objectives within coming years, European level targets which can drive the countries to act forward are
not yet quantifiably specified (Kjær et al., 2012; Directive 2008/98/EC). Therefore, the countries are not
yet prepared with concrete strategies and actions for waste prevention.
Recycling
In contrast to regulations on waste prevention, targets for recycling are well defined in the Directive.
The advance in European recycling regulations is considered to be due to a comparably long history of
practices and legislation in the European society. According to the Waste Framework Directive,
European countries are required to increase the rate of household waste reuse and recycling to above
50 % by 2020 and establish systems for separate collection of paper, metal, plastic and glass by 2015. In
order for the countries to meet these targets, they must legislate relevant national rules (Directive
2008/98/EC).
Directive 94/62/EC on Packaging and Packaging Waste
The European Union Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EC (Packaging Waste Directive) is a
set of regulation that was documented earlier than the Waste Framework Directive but has a lot of
common with the latter. Directive 94/62/EC has objectives of ensuring the protection of the
environment from packaging waste as well as the market functioning in the European Union. The
Packaging Waste Directive prioritises waste prevention and recycling as defined in the waste hierarchy
by the Waste Framework Directive. The Packaging Waste Directive also states strategies and targets in
quantifiable manners for packaging waste recycling but not for its prevention. Moreover, not so many
strategies specific for plastic packaging material are provided in the Directive (Directive 94/62/EC). An
amendment on “Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste to reduce the consumption of
lightweight plastic carrier bags” has been recently proposed in November 2013 (European Commission,
2013). However, this regulation does not cover most of plastic packaging consumption in Europe.
Considering that plastic packaging takes a considerable portion in household waste and its recycling rate
is low (Riber et al., 2009; Plastic Europe, 2013), additional discussion between Member States to take
more account on plastics are necessary.
1.3 History of Danish Waste Management System:
The history of waste to energy in Denmark dates back to year 1858, when due to the increasing
population in cities and town demanded a sanitary regulation strategy to be implemented. This gave
birth to the present system where all the municipalities need to get rid of their own sanitary conditions
such as sewerage, water supply and solid waste management (Habib, 2011). By the beginning of the
20th century municipalities were landfilling its rubbish at nearby places, and suitable areas for
landfilling started to lack around the country. Frederiksberg, a district located in the middle of
Copenhagen, had run out of such spaces, and this is the reason why they needed to change the way
they dealt with waste and thus, the first incineration plant in Denmark was built in 1903.
Before the World War II, there were three incineration plants in Demark, and all of them included
energy recovery technologies capable of providing heat and electricity from burning waste. Due to the
impacts of the war, further development of the plants remained stationary until the 1960s, when the
economic situation of the country improved and new towns were founded around Denmark. In 1965
inter-municipal companies started to work together in order to be able to provide heat to these newly
founded towns from other municipalities (Dalager, 2006).
Interest in waste to energy radically grew during the first oil crisis in 1978. By that time, Danish energy
consumption relied 92 % on oil. As a result, a long-term energy policy that seeks a more stable energy
sources was pursued. Coal power plants were introduced in the energy scheme and large-scale heating
transmission networks were built to enhance the benefit from the excess heat produced in such plants.
After coal and oil taxes were implemented, waste to energy plants became major actors in district
heating and were collaterally benefited because they could rise their heat price due to lack of taxation.
Nowadays, there are 29 incineration plants with modern technology capable of transforming waste to
heat and electricity according to the environmental requirements dictated by the EU Waste
Incineration Directive 2000 (Dalager 2006).
During the last decades, Danish waste management has presented significant improvements due to a
thorough policy implementation that specified the responsibilities of the main actors and forced them to
shift the direction of waste disposal practices. In 1987, Danish government introduced a waste policy
which focused on taking actions for repairing the damages done in the past mainly from landfilling
environmental hazardous chemicals and preventing future similar cases on the coming years (Habib,
2011).
The first national waste management plan was developed in 1992, and covered years from 1993 to 1997,
and then it was followed by its second, third and fourth edition covering from 1998 to 2012 (Kjær, 2013).
The most remarkable political actions were taken before the new millennium, such interventions were
the landfill and incineration tax, both introduced in 1987. The total ban on landfilling of combustible
waste which was approved in 1994 and implemented first on 1997. These measurements had a severe
impact in Danish waste management (Fischer et al., 2012). Additionally, waste separation policies
helped to increase the recycling rates in Denmark.
After the second waste management plan (Waste 21) was introduced in 1998, separate containers were
delivered to households where recycling rates were below the expected (Regeringen, 1999). One of the
objectives of Waste 21 was to reach a 60% recycle rate for paper and cardboard household waste.
However the amount of paper collected for recycling remained somehow steady between 2000 and
2009. The third and the fourth waste management plans where mostly focused in dealing with
packaging waste and batteries collection, respectively, though none of them had a great impact on
Danish recycling rates.
The following figure shows the recycling rates in Denmark from the year 2001 and the year 2010.
Figure 3. Recycling of MSW in Denmark, % of waste recycled as a function of time, taking into account the most important
policies put in practice. Source: Kjær, 2013
1.4. Current situation of Danish waste management system
Denmark produced 9 million tons of waste in 2011 which was distributed as follows: 61 % was recycled,
29 % was incinerated, 6 % was landfilled and approximately 4 % was kept for temporary storage and
special treatment (The Danish Government, 2013). Building and construction sector is the greatest
waste contributor with 2.664 million tons followed by household waste with 2.399 million tons, Table 1
represents the distribution of waste produced in year 2011 among the major sectors.
Incineration
There are several benefits from waste to energy such as transforming waste from a problem to a source
of energy, significant reduction of landfilling and reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions due to
substitution for more carbon-intensive energy sources (Pavlas et al., 2010). Waste to energy succeeded
in moving one step up in the EU waste hierarchy, for it replaced the traditional practices where most of
waste was landfilled. However, considering that incineration is just above of disposal in the waste
hierarchy proposed by the EU, additional measurements need to be implemented in order to enhance
both recycling and waste prevention.
Table 1.Danish waste distribution and treatment rates among the main sectors
Source: The Danish government, 2013
Source
Total
Recycling
Tons
Tons
Incineration
%
Tons
Landfilling
%
Tons
%
Households
2,399,000
856,388
36
1,342,724
56
100,442
4
Building and
construction
2,663,448
2,317,832
87
88,23
3
208,152
8
Industry
1,076,041
764,64
71
165,652
15
55,995
5
1,857,514
1,093,414
59
626,791
34
58,227
3
1,105,757
560,358
51
381,538
35
126,635
11
9,101,760
5,592,632
61
2,604,935
29
549,45
6
Services, public
sectors
Utilities and
commercial waste
Total
Waste incineration can be considered as a way to provide heat and electricity in a much more
environmentally friendly way than conventional fossil fuels. However, this perception of waste is
counterproductive from a sustainable point of view, because this approach can result in increases in
amount of waste. This can be a part of reason why Denmark has the highest rate both for incineration
and waste generation per capita in the whole EU (Eurostat, 2011). This approach could have been
considered innovative in 1980s, when Denmark just introduced landfill ban and other initiatives, but
today it is clear that incineration of valuable resources is not the best technology of waste treatment
that is available (European Environment Agency, 2013).
Denmark has 29 incineration plants which serve 98 municipalities and 5.5 million people. The country
has plans for constructing 10 more plants, and it is even expected that with the coming plants, Denmark
will have an overcapacity for incinerating domestic waste. Considering that such projects cost between
€110 million and €170 million, they must be profitable enough for being worth to construct them, which
means that there must be sufficient amount of waste to treat by either importing it from abroad or just
not promoting reduction of total rubbish. Thus, waste prevention is not thoroughly reflected in these
future national plans (Seltenrich, 2013).
Recycling
During the 2001 – 2009 period Denmark has improved its recycling rates from 36% to 47% (Figure 4) but
there was a decrease in 2010 to 42% due to legislation changes, where waste from enterprises is no
longer counted as municipal waste (Kjær, 2013). Plastic fraction is the smallest among all materials
which are collected for recycling (Table 2), and at the same time, the dry weight of plastics take 17,8 %
of waste weight, the third largest portion out of the household waste (Riber at al., 2009). European
environmental agency suggests that Denmark still has a lot of potential for enhancing recycling in
general and especially for material recycling (Kjær, 2013).
Prevention
As the European Union lacks quantifiable waste prevention targets at the European level, Denmark is
not yet prepared with concrete strategies and actions for waste prevention. The tax coverage of the
Danish weight based packaging tax is only 13 % of total retail packaging (Kjær et al., 2012). Strategies
and initiatives, apart from packaging taxes, to tackle waste conditions of the present and future in
Denmark are yet to be presented by the government (The Danish Government, 2013).
According to an investigation in European countries, the generation of packaging per unit final
consumption in Denmark is already very low – 3rd lowest following Finland and Sweden (Kjær, 2012).
This is in contrary with largest waste generation per capita of Denmark in Europe. The reason of this
contradiction is beyond the scope of this study. However, this fact implies that potential of preventing
packaging waste is relatively low than in other countries, and leads this study to draw focus on recycling
of packaging rather than prevention.
Table 2. Main waste fractions of household waste collected for recycling (1000 tonnes) in Denmark (SAG-database 2009 and
Miljøstyrelsen 2011)
2000
Paper, paper packaging
2002
2004
2006
2007
2008
2009
181
204
221
211
246
207
221
Glass
83
111
88
85
91
65
98
Plastic
2
5
4
4
5
4
5
Metal
17
25
25
31
76
410
313
Green kitchen waste
45
37
53
41
43
38
50
505
512
495
592
640
527
611
Garden waste
Figure 4. Recycling rate of MSW in Denmark. Source: Eurostat, 2012
1.5. Danish Resource Strategy for waste
Denmark without waste (The Danish Government, 2013) is a report from the Danish Government which
proclaims strategies for enhancing efficiency of resource use by taking initiatives in the waste sector of
the country. The strategy also aims to achieve environmental protection, economic benefits and others
by the initiatives. The strategy in the report gives directions to initiatives that are to be undertaken from
2013 to 2018. In this part, details of the resource strategy are discussed to understand what drives
formulation of policies and plans for waste in Aalborg and Denmark.
The Danish Government is aware of the situation where Denmark produces the largest amount of waste
per capita, and this is one of the important issues that the resource strategy strives to address. Thus, the
main goals of resource strategy regarding waste are to secure sustainability of resources, recycle more
household waste and incinerate less waste. The following is a summary of Denmark without waste, the
official report of the Danish Resource Strategy (The Danish Government, 2013).
Overview
The main specific goal stated in the resource strategy is to increase the amount of recycled household
waste more than twice as current in 10 years, that is, until 2022. The strategy also places an emphasis
on the quality of recycled waste. In order for individual municipalities to take local conditions into
account and adapt to the target on their own paces, the government allows municipalities discrete
decisions in waste management solutions or setting plans for it. This is due to a policy of the Danish
Government that there shall not be further requirements for municipalities than what they are currently
imposed with. Therefore, collection of household waste is the responsibility of municipalities and
capacity of treatment of those waste must be ensured by the municipalities.
Especially, separation of more household waste at source and at central facilities is pointed out as an
important factor for increasing the recycling amount. The resource strategy also identifies the
importance of cost-effectiveness and socio-economic appropriateness of the waste separation schemes
in Danish municipalities.
The goals in the Strategy have been set to meet targets set by the EU at the same time. Increase in
recycling rate of household waste and especially of packaging waste are examples of the targets.
Currently, Denmark has three main policy instruments to boost recycling: taxes on landfilling and
incineration, deposit-return system and treatment requirements. The taxes grant recycling economic
incentives as they are not charged on recycling. The deposit-return system encourages households to
separate and collect cans and bottles for reuse or recycling. The treatment requirements define how
different types of waste shall be treated. According to these requirements, for example, waste materials
with PVC should be landfilled and certain types of paper must be recycled.
More recycling of materials from households and the service sector
The following are initiatives under the Strategy:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
More recycling of materials from households and the service sector
More recycling of materials from waste electronic equipment and shredder waste
From waste incineration to biogasification and recycling
Better exploitation of important nutrients such as phosphorus
Improved quality in recycling construction and demolition waste
Green conversion – new commercial opportunities
Among those six, the first initiative ‘More recycling of materials from households and the service sector’
is most relevant to the topic of this study. In this initiative, the goal of doubling the recycling amount is
emphasized once again and more concretely stated. The Government plans to recycle 50 % of
household waste in 2022 by raising the amount of recycling by twice as much. By this goal, the
Government strives to decrease incineration of household waste because it is inefficient to burn
materials which otherwise could be taken back into economic cycle.
The Strategy explains how the Government plans to achieve this goal. All fractions of household waste
will be given attention and more facilities for collection of waste will be installed. However, the current
strategy puts a lot of emphasis on organic waste, whereas plastic waste is not given a major
consideration. As mentioned above, municipalities are the main actors in making decisions for local
waste management and the Government does not place new requirements to them. Instead,
developments in recycling in municipalities will be evaluated in 2016 and initiatives will be set again
based on the results. The Strategy lists a few examples of what municipalities, states and enterprises can
do to live up to the recycling goal. They include information and guidance about waste separation and
recycling, subsidies for development of recycling technologies and incentives, such as exemption of fees,
which encourage recycling.
Under the initiative ‘More recycling of materials from households and the service sector’, there are 10
specific initiatives that complement it. On the top of the list of the initiatives, the Strategy suggests new
collection schemes by municipalities that serve easy and accessible ways to separate and collect
household waste. There is an initiative that plans to provide guidelines with solution examples for
separation and high quality of the separated material. Campaign or information for the public to
participate in recycling program is also a part of the initiatives. Others include funding for development
of facilities, partnership between municipalities, enterprises, institutions and so on to develop
technologies and waste systems and legislation that requires or encourages enterprises to collect waste
from their products.
There is an increasing need for technologies for waste separation, and this is manifested again by a
research project called INNOSORT (Nordic Co-operation, 2013). This is a project funded by the Danish
Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation and conducted by various academic institutions and
companies. The aim of the project is to develop technologies to sort waste and result in high quality of
the sorted materials. This is done by collaboration between high technology companies and institutions.
Implication to this study
As the Strategy pointed out, collection schemes that provide citizens with easy and accessible systems to
separate and collect household waste is an important factor to promote recycling. The schemes can be
supplemented with guidance and information for citizens to help them understand the system and its
benefits and proactively participate to the system. In order to make this happen, it is necessary to
investigate willingness of citizens to comply with the new collection schemes. Moreover, this
investigation can give municipalities knowledge about patterns in waste behaviours and lead to
development of the new schemes with better effectiveness.
1.6. Different types of plastics
In plastic industries around the world, manufacturers are required to signify types of plastic on their
plastic products upon needs of recyclers for efficient sorting and recycling. Society of the Plastics
Industry (SPI) developed a system called Resin Identification Code (RIC), which classifies plastic materials
into seven types according to their chemical characteristics and recyclability (Society of the Plastics
Industry, n.d.). Member states are obliged to use this identification system for plastic and other types of
packaging by the European Union (94/62/EC). The RIC system is useful for understanding difficulties and
opportunities of recycling plastics and developing ways to improve plastic recycling in this study.
The first two types, PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and HDPE (high density polyethylene), are most
effectively and frequently recycled (Hopewell, Dvorak, & Kosior, 2009; Selke, 2006). 75 % of plastic
waste in Nordic countries are PE (polyethylene), PP (polypropylene), PS, PET and PVC (The Nordic
Council of Ministers, 2013). Plastic types from 1 to 6 in the RIC are thermoplastic (Michaud et al., 2010;
Biron, 2007). Thermoplastics can be recycled by changing physical state: melting, shaping and cooling.
As these processes are reversible and can be done several times, those types of plastics can be
repeatedly recycled. On the other hand, thermoset plastics are difficult to recycle as the processes
involve irreversible chemical reactions that cleave cross-linking between polymer chains (Rader &
Stockel, 1995). Table 3 details the recyclability and applications of virgin and recycled material of each
type of plastics.
Difficulty in recycling
Most polymers are insoluble with each other and result in heterogeneity in recycled products. This
fundamental problem in plastic recycling requires different plastic types to be separated for recycling.
Different melting temperatures contribute to difficulties of plastic recycling. PVC (polyvinyl chloride), for
instance, is decomposed when heated to the melting point of PET and brings about black flaws when
treated together with PET. Even when similar resins are input together into recycling process, problems
occur. For example, when injection-mould HDPE and blow-mould HDPE are mixed together, the mixture
cannot be mould either by injection or blowing, due to difference in melting temperature (Selke, 2006).
Not only technical issues but also economic profitability or business operational constraints limit the
recycling of plastics. Different colors in feedstock for plastic recycling can result in a problem.
Incorporating dark-colored plastic into light-colored leaves marks or heterogeneous color in recycled
products, which undermines the value. Contaminants, such as food on plastic waste are major factors
that make plastic recycling processes require additional cleaning works, therefore making it more
expensive. Moreover, handling or removing contaminants from resins with low density, such as film
plastics, is difficult. EPS (expanded polystyrene) has very low bulk density and thus cost in transporting it
is too high compared to its weight (Selke, 2006).
1.7. City of Aalborg
Aalborg, the study area of this project, is a city with population of 104,885 and area of 37.475 km2 (City
of Aalborg, 2012). The city has the third largest number of population in Denmark (Statics Denmark) and
is located in North of Jutland, a northern state of Denmark. Similar to the figures in the data of the
national level, recycling rate of household waste is 39 % and incineration rate 58 %. Especially,
household plastic waste is not collected by the municipal waste collection authority and thus has a
potential to increase the recycling rate. The only way for citizens to separate plastic wastes is to travel a
long distance and bring them to recycling centres, of which only few numbers are located in the city
(Aalborg Forsyning, Renovation).
1.8. Problem formulation
Based on the situations in Aalborg, Denmark and Europe, this study seeks to find answers to the
following research question:
What are the most appropriate collection systems for household plastic packaging waste in Aalborg?
In order to answer this main research question, answers for the following sub-research questions are
pursued:
How does the waste management system in Aalborg currently work?
What has restricted the recycling rate of household plastic packaging waste?
What policies and systems in municipal waste management can be implemented?
Table 3. Effectiveness in recycling and application of virgin and recycled material of different types of plastics
Source: American Chemistry Council; Hopewell et al., 2009; Plastics New Zealand; Clean Up Australia, 2009
Sign
Name
Polyethylene
Terephthalate
High Density
Polyethylene
Polyvinyl
Chloride
Low Density
Polyethylene
Effectiveness in
recycling
high
high;
but complex when
waste has wide variety
of colour and mixtures
with LDPE and PP
poor;
cross-contamination
with PET
poor;
damages recycling
equipment
Polypropylene not widely recycled, but
has potential;
needs sorting and
outlets for recycled PP
Polystyrene,
poor;
Expanded
difficult to separate
polystyrene
from mixed collection
Other
variability in
environmental impacts
from recycling
processes
Product Application
Application of recycled material
soft drink and water bottles
Non-packaging: textiles
pillow and sleeping bag filling,
clothing, soft drink bottles, carpet
milk bottles, juice bottles, shampoo, chemical
and detergent bottles
Non-packaging: injection molding, extruded
pipe, and wire and cable covering
bottles for non-food items,
buckets, crates, fencing, pipes and
recycling bins.
cosmetic containers, electrical conduit,
plumbing pipes
Non-packaging: pipe, window frames,
fencing, medical products, wire and cable
insulation
shrink wrap and stretch film, coatings for
paper cartons and cups, squeezable bottles
Non-packaging: injection molding, adhesives
and sealants, and wire and cable coverings.
containers for yogurt, dip pottles,
Non-packaging: fibers, appliances,
automotive and carpeting
flooring, film and sheets, cables,
packaging, binders, mud flaps and
mats
plastic cutlery, CD cases, safety helmet,
foamed polystyrene, foamed meat trays
Non-packaging: agricultural trays, cable
spools, building insulation, coat hangers
variable packaging
Non packaging: car parts, appliance parts,
computers, electronics, water cooler bottles,
medical devices
protective packaging, thermal
insulation, foamed foodservice
applications, car parts, concrete
aggregate, plastic timber
car parts, concrete aggregate,
bottles, plastic timber
shipping envelopes, garbage bin
liners, slip sheets
automobile battery cases,
shipping pallets, trays, bins, pipes
2. Method
To answer the research questions raised in the previous chapter, information were gathered by
literature review, interviews and questionnaire surveys. Information about national waste management
strategies of different European countries and initiatives of cities in and around Denmark were gathered
from literatures. However, regional specific information such as physical characteristics of household
waste and actions undertaken by the municipality, which is necessary in order to understand the
regional situation, can hardly gathered from literatures.
Therefore, professionals who work for the refuse utility company and environmental institution were
interviewed. Through the interview, facts that explain the current waste management system of Aalborg
and Denmark, opinions of the professionals about the system and future plans contrived by regional
waste management actors were collected. In order to develop waste management alternatives suitable
to the situation of Aalborg municipality, interview questions ask respondents of their opinions about the
alternatives based on the professional views and experiences. Especially, strengths and weaknesses of
the alternatives, practicability of them and reasons why they have not been implemented in Aalborg are
studied at the same time.
The waste management policies and systems developed and tailored for Aalborg from the interviews
were the basis of questions to be asked in the following questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey
identifies willingness of people to use the waste management systems and comply with the policies
given in the questions. The questionnaire also investigated motivations and barriers that citizens
recognise, preferences towards waste collection systems widely used in Europe and so forth as will be
discussed in chapter 2.6. Questionnaire. In this way, the study determined the realistic possibility of the
alternatives and appeal the necessity of them more effectively.
2.4. Literature Review
Through the literature review, this study gathered second source data related to the focus of interest.
These literature review included academic articles, national and EU policies, reports from national or
international organisations. It gathered information regarding what kind of plastic collection systems
and in which conditions they have been successfully implemented around the Europe. Collection
systems widely found in European countries were studied and listed with definitions. Comparisons
between instruments for waste collection and amount of collected plastic waste were made.
2.5. Interview
Jennifer Rowley, in her recently published paper, wrote that interviews can be conducted when a study
aims to “collect facts, or gain insights into or understanding of opinions, attitudes, experiences,
processes, behaviours, or predictions” (Rowley, 2012). Interview is an appropriate measure to gather
the factual data about systems and plans of the municipal waste management that have been and will
be undertaken by the municipality of Aalborg. The biggest advantage of conducting interview in this
study is collection of qualitative data that are not available in literatures. As there study starts with little
information about the management system of the municipality, interviews provide with functions of
collecting data in early phases of the study and guiding the draft of the questionnaire (Rowley, 2012).
Information from the Interviews
Based on the facts, interviewees reflect on strengths and weaknesses of the waste management in
Aalborg and suggest opinions for improvement of the management from their professional views.
Details and insights from professional interviewees generate options of alternative waste management
systems and policies, of which the preference of citizens are further evaluated by the questionnaire
survey. The process of the interview with several examples of questions that guided the interview is
depicted in Figure 5. Three sub-research questions were the main themes of the interviews. Discussion
on each topic started with introducing questions to allow interviewees freely talk about the issues and
to ensure a comprehensive range of data is collected.
Validation
The interviews in this study adopts philosophies of neo-positivism in their design and analysis. The study
presents respondents interview questions in a semi-structured form. This type of interview is mainly
guided by structured questions and probing questions are asked for interviewees to elaborate specific
topics that emerge from the answers. Research design methods claimed by neo-positivism seek to grant
validation to studies where the methods are utilised.
Neo-positivism considers interview as a tool of transmitting truth independent of context of
conversation between the interviewer and interviewee (Qu & Dumay, 2011). In this paradigm, the
interviewer takes a neutral role to minimise all types of bias and research influences. The goal of surveys
in this paradigm is obtain quality data and valid findings (Roulston, 2010). Facts concerning the
municipal waste management system required for the current study can well be researched by neopositivist interview designs. Interview question is the first factor that determines validity of research
methods. The questions, shown above in the section “Information from the Interviews”, for the
interviews avoid leading respondents to any assumptions during conversations. Neo-positivist
interviews are many times conducted by structured questions that are prepared after initiatory studies
in the topic area (Qu & Dumay, 2011). By taking a neutral stance in the interview, the study ensures a
comprehensive range of knowledge and opinions without bias is transferred from experts. Structured
format of questions is designed to make the best use of the interview to obtain necessary information,
again without bias.
Current waste
management
system
Future plans for
plastic recycling
Alternative
policies and
systems
•Could you tell us about waste management in Aalborg?
(Introducing question)
•What are compositions of different materials in collected waste?
•What is the recycling rate of household plastic packaging waste?
If it is low, what do you think the reason is?
•What factors do affect the recycling of plastic packaging waste?
•Do you have any plans for plastic recycling?
(Introducing question)
•How can the plans improve the municipal management system?
•Which stakeholders in the region are involved in the plans?
•What do you think of collection scheme suggested?
•Which schemes do you think useful or unuseful?
Why do you think so?
•Please rank the scenarios in terms of usefulness in Aalborg.
Why do you think so?
Figure 5. Processes of interviews in the study and themes in each process
2.6. Questionnaire
Appropriateness of use of questionnaire survey
Not only developing waste management alternatives for household packaging waste recycling, the study
conducts a questionnaire survey to examine the practicability of them. Questionnaire surveys yield data
of “information about people's knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour” (Kopac, 1991). By
conducting this method of study, the developed alternatives that drew much preferences can be
considered appealing to be implemented. On the other hand, for the alternatives to which the
responses are negative, the study can find their limitations in practices and directions for modification.
Information from the questionnaires
The questionnaires start with questions that collect basic data of respondents, namely age, gender, area
of residence, education level, income and housing type. The questionnaires included questions for
examining what people currently do with recyclable household packaging waste; reasons for the
behaviours; factors that affect the behaviours; values they have towards waste recycling and
incineration; preferences towards options for sorting household plastic packaging waste; reasons of the
preferences; and acceptable distance between household and waste bins.
Waste behaviours and preferences for plastic packaging waste collection systems were questioned in
rating scales. Especially, frequency of waste behaviours were asked of respondents to be rated.
Questions about reasons of behaviours and factors that affect behaviours and values were in forms of
checklist. Choices in the questions will include “others” with blanks to get qualitative data that could not
be included in the choices. Data of reasons for the preferences are collected by checklist questions to
allow various choices (Kopac, 1991).
In order to quantifiably evaluate agreement to statements or frequency of behaviours based on
responses from citizens, data from the questionnaire survey were analysed using severity index (SI) (M.
Hasnain IsaFaridah, 2005). Questions asking extent of agreement or frequency were presented with five
rating options ranging from 0 to 4. From the data gather by the questions, SI was calculated with the
equation as follows:
SI =
0×a+1×b+2×c+3×d+4×e
4 × (a + b + c + d + e)
----------- (1)
where a, b, c, d and e are number of respondents who made rating choices ranging from the lowest to
highest agreement or frequency.
Data management and analysis were conducted using Microsoft Excel 2013®.
Validation
The questionnaire survey was conducted in various places around Aalborg municipality. Based on
calculation of sample size in Statistics, in order to obtain a representative sample for 95 % of confidence
level with a 5 % confidence interval, the sample size requires at least 375 respondents. However, due to
the time constraint, the survey uses confidence level of 10 % which leads to the sample size would be 95
persons in Aalborg East. The sample size is calulated according to the following formulae:
𝑛0 =
𝑍 2 × 𝑝(1 − 𝑝)
𝑐2
where,
n0 = the sample size
Z = the Z value (e.g. 1.96 for 95% confidence level)
p(1-p) = estimated variance (usually 0.52)
------------------------ (2)
c = confidence interval; and
𝑛1 =
𝑛0
𝑛
1 + 𝑃0
------------------------ (3)
where,
n1 = corrected sample size when n0 > 0.05 * P
n0 = the sample size calculated in the previous formula
P = population of the study group (Cochran, 1977; James E. Bartlett, et al., 2001).
From the equation (1), confidence interval for a certain sample size and confidence level can be
calculated as follows:
𝑍 2 × 𝑝(1 − 𝑝)
𝑐=√
𝑠𝑠
------------------------ (4)
The study used the categorical sample size calculation formula (equation (1)) because categorical data
such as gender and group ages where significant for categorizing the answers of the respondents (XieYu
& PowersDaniel, 2008).
In order to select sample from get representative and valid results, samples of the survey were
purposively collected in terms of age, gender and housing types so that the distribution of those factors
in the sample is similar to that of the original population. Target respondents of the survey were Danish
citizens who live in Aalborg city.
3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Literature Review
3.1.1. Netherlands
In Netherlands, there are two main collection schemes for recycling which are source separation and
post-separation. Source separation means that recyclable materials are sorted, proffered and collected
separately from household through kerbside collection and drop-off collection. Post-separation is to
remove the materials from household waste using mechanical ways at a waste treatment station
(Velzen, et al., 2013).
Another important collection method in Netherlands system is taxation scheme, called for Diftar,
charging the fee for waste collection by calculating the amount of waste. Municipalities can decide how
to levy the collection fee, for example, weight-based pricing, frequency-based pricing, etc. (Velzen, et al.,
2013). Furthermore, weight-, bag-, volume- and frequency-based pricing belong to the concept of unitbased pricing. Among the four types of unit-based pricing, the bag- and weight-based systems have a
better performance compared with the frequency- and volume-based systems. What is more, compared
with a fixed fee such as a flat rate that is characterized as having a zero marginal price, the unit-based
pricing scheme results in a higher recycling rate because of its marginal prices for an extra waste
generation (Dijkgraaf & Gradus, 2004).
In 2005, the producer responsibility for packaging was introduced to improve the recycling rate in
Netherlands (Goorhuis, 以及其他人, 2012). In 2006, a new packaging waste law introduced producer
responsibility for all types of packaging waste (Velzen, et al., 2013). Producer responsibility means that
producers must bear a joint responsibility for the management of their products in the waste stage.
Producers’ responsibility has been imposed via legislation on packaging (Velzen, et al., 2013).
In regard to the recycling of PET bottles in Netherlands, the deposit return system is an important
collection scheme except for separation collection system. However, the PET deposit refund system
costs more per ton than the other systems. The abolishment of deposit refund system will reduce the
cost of PPW recycling, but a small reduction in the amount of recycled PET (Velzen, et al., 2013).
In the end, the plastic packaging waste collection system is complex in Netherlands. Source separation
and post-separation are the two major plastic packaging waste collection systems. Kerbside scheme and
drop-off collection are the systems through which plastic packaging wastes are collected in source
separation. What makes an increase in complexity of the Dutch collection system is unit-based pricing
scheme. Furthermore, producer responsibility and deposit return systems for PET bottles are also
important elements in collection system. But according to the previous research some people think PET
deposit return system is expensive. Waste Fund is a unique method in Dutch system to promote the
household plastic packaging waste separation. We can learn that the various kinds of collection schemes
operated together lead to the high recycling rate of plastic packaging waste in Netherlands. And it will
be beneficial if part of the revenues could be used to assist the separation activities.
3.1.2 Germany
Germany has a long and successful history of waste management and can be an example for other
European countries. Nearly all the demands of European Union in this area have been achieved many
years before deadline. Remarks, figures and tables in this chapter are from Municipal waste
management in Germany by Christian Fischer (Fischer, 2013)
Germany was the first country in EU that introduced producer responsibility principle in waste
management. The principal is currently implemented in such areas as packaging, cars, solvents, batteries
waste electric and electronic equipment and so on. According to “Recycling Management and Waste
Act”, households waste is the responsibility of local authorities, which have to provide citizens with
collection, transportation and utilization systems as well as measures for promoting waste prevention
behaviour (EEA, 2009). Also the country was among the first to introduce landfilling limitations in 1990s
which caused the 48% of recycling by 2001, 25% of landfilling and 22% of incineration. Moreover, thanks
to total landfill ban on unsorted waste and other actions, in 2010 the landfilling rate was nearly 0%,
recycling rate 62%, incineration – 37%. Figure 6 shows the dynamic of changing of recycling rate from
2001 to 2010. It is important to mention that in some of European countries waste which is going to
mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plants is counted as recycled waste which may lead to
overestimation of recycling rate, however in Germany the waste after MBT is counted as incinerated
waste, so we can say that some overestimation of incineration rate is taking place. Twenty out of twenty
seven EU countries introduced landfill tax in waste management policy, however Germany is not one of
those countries, and it has managed to achieve such outstanding results only with introducing a ban on
un-pretreated waste landfilling (2005), producer responsibility principle and other managerial solutions.
The recycling rate grew from 48% in 2001 to 64% in 2008, but then we can observe a decrease in
following two years to 62%. This can be explained by the fact that in the period from 2002 to 2006 the
generation if household waste in Germany decreased 11% (Figure 7) and the amounts of recycling
remained the same in that period (MSW Germany, 2013).
Figure 6. Recycling rates in Germany. Source: Eurostat, 2012.
Figure 7. Municipal solid waste per capita in Germany. Source: Eurostat, 2012.
Table 4 shows the composition of waste collected for recycling. We can see the most of the fractions
show decrease up to 2006 which is consistent with the previous data about total waste generation. Also
it is important that “light packaging” fraction which is mostly represented by plastic packaging is the
second largest fraction with almost 19% share in total recycled waste in 2010. This can give an idea for
estimation of Danish potential amounts of recyclable plastics.
Table 4. Composition of waste collected for recycling in Germany
Source: (Statistics Germany, 2012 and Statistics Germany, 2012a)
Based on previous data of recycling rate, a forecast can be made (Figure 8). As can be seen in the figure,
the predictions for 2020 year recycling rate dramatically differ from one another. Germany has reached
the 50% recycling target of Waste Framework Directive for 2020 year in 2002. However, if the trend of
past two years remain, the decrease in recycling rates by 2020 year will be observed. Also, it should be
noted that the predictions are quite primitive because no future policy actions and changes in
estimation methods are taken into account.
Figure 8. Forecasts of recycling rate in Germany.
Source: Calculation by Copenhagen Resource Institute (CRI), based on Eurostat, 2012
Germany is a federation with sixteen Federal states. The responsibility for waste management is shared
between national and states government. The National Ministry of Environment is responsible for
setting strategic goals, law creation, public relations etc., whereas local authorities are responsible for
adopting national requirements to particular conditions by issuing waste management act. There is no
one general waste management plan in Germany, instead each Federal state is developing its own one
(EEA, 2009).
Figure 9, 10 and 11 show differences between Federal states in conducting recycling waste policy. Three
states were chosen for each type of recycling: region with the highest generated total amount of
municipal solid waste in 2008, region with the lowest percentage of recycling in 2008, and region with
the highest percentage of recycling in 2008. We can see big differences in recycling rates from state to
state. This is a proof that there are still a lot of potential for improving waste management results and a
motive for some states to rethink and redevelop its waste management policies. It is important to
mention that the recycling level of almost 100 % of the Trier region because of the fact that all the waste
sent to MBT is calculated as recycled (MSW Germany, 2013).
Figure 9. Regional differences in total recycling in Germany
Figure 10. Regional differences in material recycling in Germany
Figure 11. Regional differences in organic recycling in Germany
Collection system for household solid waste in Germany
As it was mentioned before, Germany have a separate waste management system in each Federal state.
It means that collection systems for household waste differ as well. However, some rough
understanding and assessment of waste collection in the country can be made after having a closer look
on one of the examples. The city of Bohn provides comprehensive information about its waste
management through its official website. Every household has four bins: black, green, blue and yellow
one. The waste has to be sorted and different materials have to be put into appropriate bins. The city of
Bohn made informative pictures explaining waste separation principles to citizens (Figure 12).
In addition to the four bins, there are some more collection features.





Each household separates glass according to its colour and disposes it to special glass containers
which are located in every neighbourhood.
Bulky waste such as furniture, carpets up to 50m2 are collected four times a year
Large electrical devices such as refrigerators, TV sets, washing machines, etc. are collected from
each household by waste company after a phone call.
Small electrical devices such as toasters, irons, etc. have to be disposed to red bins at the Office
for City Cleaning and Waste Management.
Paint, lacquer, solvents, fluorescent and energy-saving lamps, alkaline solutions, acids, batteries,
cleaning agents have to be brought to the waste recycling plant in the city.
Figure 12. Images for instruction of waste separation provided for citizens in the city of Bohn, Germany.
3.1.3. Sweden
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency requires municipalities to plan waste management in
each area in cooperation with other social planning. Similar to other European countries, the Swedish
government enacts regulations and propose instruments for waste management, while municipalities
establish and execute local plans and treat waste (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2012).
Household waste in Sweden is collected by a combination of different methods. Recycling stations or
smaller collection points (drop-off sites) are located in residential areas to collect packaging and other
household waste. Recycling centres also collect special types of waste such as bulky waste and
electronic waste that are taken to the centres. In some cases, apartment blocks have exclusive recycling
facilities. Recycling stations and collection points and collection at these facilities are organized,
operated or subsidised by manufacturers, producers or importers according to the producer
responsibility. Consumers of the products, or households, pay for the collection system of producers as
part of the cost when they purchase the products and the amount of the fee is decided by producers.
Bringing and separating each type of end-of-life products or their packaging is responsibility of
households. The producer responsibility was first legislated in 1994 for paper waste from newspaper
and another law for packaging waste was enacted in 1997 (Ebbesson, 2004).
Waste to which the producer responsibility does not apply is collected by municipalities or their
contractors. In Borlänge, as an example, two different bins are given to households, one of which is for
residual waste and the other for biowaste. Residual waste collected into the bins are termed as
combustible and are incinerated, while the biowaste is composted (Traffic Administration, Department
of Waste Management, 2009; Östlund, 2009). Recycling stations can also be provided by municipalities.
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency strives to provide citizens with collection systems that
are simple to use and accessible (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2012).
There are also municipalities in Sweden where kerbside collection has been implemented. Especially,
municipalities such as Bjuv, Åstorp and Helsingborg have kerbside collection systems for hard plastic
waste. While there are municipalities where kerbsides are used to separate waste into two fractions of
dry recyclables and biowaste, other municipalities have extended kerbside collection system that allows
waste separated into more fractions at source by citizens. A study in Sweden investigated source-sorting
in municipalities that have different collection systems and found out that kerbside collection, especially
the extended system, had the highest effectiveness in separation of packaging (Dahlén et al., 2007).
Another study pointed out the reason for the effectiveness of the kerbside system as accessibility, or
nearness, of citizens to the system (Sörbom, 2003).
Deposit-return system also has been implemented in Sweden. The system for aluminium has been since
1982 and for plastic beverage bottles since 1991 and return rates of those materials are over 80 % (Tojo,
2011).
In short, producer responsibility is a major factor in collection of household waste and especially
packaging waste in Sweden. This market-based policy transferred responsibility of collecting and
managing waste from commercial products from municipalities to producers, thus the latter are
required to manage the waste physically or economically (Ebbesson, 2004). In order for this policy to be
implemented, cooperation of municipalities, producers and citizens was necessary and this was possible
because of legal frameworks across the nation. Producers provide recycling centres or drop-off sites in
residential areas for collection of the waste.
This policy contributed to reducing volume of packaging and increasing recycling rate of waste, but
recycling rate of plastic packaging is low (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). The Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency points out weaknesses of waste collection system in the country.
Firstly, low number of collection system results in long distances between houses and the systems.
Secondly, waste fractions that producers are not responsible with are collected by municipalities, but
there are not many municipalities that effectively lead the waste to recycling through their collection
systems. Moreover, not all municipalities accept plastic waste in their recycling systems (Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency, 2012).
From the case of Sweden, the city of Aalborg can learn the importance of accessibility of collection
systems. Although municipalities and producers provided recycling stations, this main collection system
does not fulfil demands for more convenient ways to use them. As demonstrated by the study of Dahlén
et al. (2007) which was mentioned, variability and accessibility in collection systems can help improve
recycling of plastic packaging both in Sweden and Aalborg.
3.1.4. United Kingdom
3.1.4.1. Types of UK household plastic packaging waste
In the waste management system of UK, plastic packaging waste considered to be recyclables from
household is divided into plastic bottles, non-bottle rigid plastic packaging and plastic film (also called
flexible plastic) and increasingly recycled in recent years. Non-bottle rigid plastics include nondurable
items or packaging such as high density polyethylene (HDPE) tubs, polypropylene (PP) cups, similar food
containers, and durable items such as pallets, crates, carts, 5-gallon buckets and packaging for electronic
appliances (Jennifer, 2012).
In relation to non-bottle rigid plastic, there exists some argument on its interpretation in UK. According
to UK household plastic packaging collection survey in 2011, non-bottle rigid household plastic
packaging is recommended to use the description of ‘pots, tubs and trays’, which has been adopted by
most of the local authorities in UK. However, local authorities use other description such as soup tubs,
yogurt pots and so on. Only few authorities prefer to use the polymer codes, being considered to be
ineffective by Recoup (Recycling of Used Plastics Limited (Recoup), 2011).
It provides a basis to a deeper understanding of the UK household plastic packaging collection schemes
by separating household packaging plastics into plastic bottles and non-bottle rigid plastics.
3.1.4.2. Overview of collection schemes in UK
Currently, main household plastic packaging collection schemes in UK are bring (or drop-off) scheme and
kerbside scheme (Morgan, 2013). In addition to these two schemes, there are producer responsibility
and recycling centres. For example, in Northamptonshire, there are household waste recycling centres
collecting hard plastics and plastic bottle (Northamptonshire County Council, 2013). EU producer
responsibility scheme for plastic packaging is introduced in 1997, which is implemented because of EU
Packaging Directive (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2011). The producer
responsibility in UK is defined without the extending financial responsibility, completely to producers.
However, in other countries producers have to be liable for the full cost of packaging from cradle to
grave (Hogg D. D., Gibbs, Elliott, & O’Brien, 2011). In this case study, the mainly focus was put on the
analysis of kerbside scheme and bring scheme (or drop-off scheme) because of their popularity in UK.
The introductions of UK plastic packaging kerbside collection and bring collection are a summary from
UK Household Plastics Collection Survey (Morgan, 2013). Bring scheme is the traditional collection
scheme in UK and collects only plastic bottles in the initial phase of its implementation. In this scheme,
citizens can bring their packaging plastics into the recycling containers that are put in the central public
places such as supermarket sites or car park, and so on. In 1994, only 425 tons of plastic bottles were
collected by bring scheme. However, thanks to the increased awareness of local authorities about
benefits of recycling plastic bottles, development of markets for the recycled plastic bottles and installed
infrastructures for handling and sorting plastic bottles, collections kept growing. Generally, because of
implementing bring scheme, the public have a better understanding of the concept of recycling,
especially household plastic packaging recycling. These changes paved the way for the introduction of
kerbside scheme in 2003. Kerbside scheme is where recyclables are collected directly from doorsteps of
households. People do not need go to the collection sites as they do in the bring schemes, so it is easier
and more convenient for them to separate their packaging plastics in the kerbside scheme. That is also
an important reason why that kerbside scheme is more popular than bring scheme and is working as the
major collection scheme in UK.
3.1.4.3. Kerbside schemes
Plastic bottles collection
During the period from 2005 to 2009, the amount of plastic bottles collected from Kerbside had a sharp
growth, ranging from 46,918 tons in 2005 to 215,576 tons in 2009. In 2012, 96% of the local authorities
provided 391 kerbside collection schemes for plastic bottles in UK which covers up to 25.3 million of the
26.4 million households in the UK with one usual resident. 269,790 tons of plastic bottles were collected
in 2012, with an increase of 4.3% compared to the last year. According to the existing data from 2005 to
2012, the average kerbside collection rates can be calculated (see Figure 13).
Figure 13. Average Kerbside Collection Rates of Plastic Bottles per Household from 2005-2012.
Source: UK Household Plastic Collection Survey, 2013
Figure 13 shows that the average kerbside collection rates experienced a steady increase from 2009 to
2012 after the sharply increase from 2005 to 2009. Moreover, the average kerbside collection has a
potential to be increased beyond 20 kg per household per year, if all the plastic bottles consumed in UK
households were collected. Therefore, there is still a large space to improve the existing collection
schemes.
To identify the potential to enhance the average collection rate, plastic bottle collection by kerbside
systems in different regions of the UK was compared (Table 5).
Table 5. Kerbside Plastic Bottle Recovery (Tons) And Average Collected Per household (kg) by Country and Region
In Table 5, Wales has a highest average collection rate of 15kg per household per year with total amount
of 17,965 tons. In the contrary, England only has an average collection rate of 11.4kg per household per
year, although it accounts for the largest total collected amount of 221,966 tons of plastic bottles. The
total amount of plastic bottles collection in Northern Ireland is at the lowest among the countries and
regions, but the average amount of collected plastic per household per yea (13.3 kg/hh/year) is a
relative good performance.
The average collection rates of different countries are various. From the comparison of average kerbside
plastic bottles collection in Countries and Regions, Wales collects the most in average level. Difference in
average collection level among different countries and regions in UK indicates that there must be good
experience in the well-done counties that can be learnt by others.
Pots, tubs and trays collection
There is a rigid increase of 518% in the amount of pots, tubs and trays collection from 18,791 tons
collected in 2008 to 116,071 tons collected in 2012. 224 local authorities potentially covering 60% of all
UK households provided the kerbsides schemes for collecting the non-rigid plastic packaging in 2012.
Types of container
Three common types of kerbside collection container are wheelbins, box and bags (disposable and reusable). Kerbside has been most frequently used since 1997, which accounts for 59% of the kerbside
plastic bottle collections, followed by boxes with a percentage of 24% and bags occupied for 17%.
Analysis of recent data shows that boxes performs better in plastic collection in terms of average
collection rate compared to the other types (Table 6):
Table 6. The average collection rate of different types of containers
Types
Box
Wheel Bin
Bag
Rates(kg/hh/yr)
12.7
11.8
11.6
In relation to the weight of plastic bottles collected per household per year, wheel bins have the highest
marginal performance in previous years. However, there was a slightly increase in the box average
collection performance. Reason for this improvement could be the introduction of multiple box systems,
for example, the stackable box system shown below (Figure 14).
Figure 14. The stackable box.
Source: UK Household Plastic Collection Survey, 2013
Participation rate of kerbside schemes
Participation rate is an important factor to measure the performance of the collection schemes. Figure
15 shows the average kerbside participation rate of different container type. The participation rate
showed in the figure is not only for plastics, but all the dry recyclable materials, because plastics are an
integral part of dry recyclables. It can be seen that the wheel bins accounts for the highest participation
rate of 91%. This good performance is directly due to its common use of alternative weekly collection.
Figure 15. Average participation rate by container type
3.1.4.4. Drop-off (Bring) schemes
Most of the bring collection sites have been established after 2000. In 2012, 54,540 tons of plastics were
collected from bring schemes and included 46,264 tons of plastic bottles and 8,276 tons of pots, tubs
and trays. In recent years, the total amount of plastics collected from the bring schemes in UK is steady.
However, there is a decrease of 284 sites in 2012 compared with the 8320 sites in 2011 and a reduction
of 783 sites from the 8801 sites in 2010. To some extent, the bring sites reduction results from the
popularity of kerbsides schemes.
According to the survey, 17 % of local authorities in the UK planned to remove the bring schemes,
because kerbside schemes showed better performance. It has been reported that after the introduction
of a kerbside plastic collection, the plastics collected from the bring scheme can suffer a significant
reductions of anything up to 90%. Some of them also argue that bring schemes result in a high levels of
contamination and running cost. Nevertheless, councils give series of reasons for retaining the bring
scheme. The reasons are supporting the kerbside collections, meeting resident needs and public
demand for the service, an overflow for people on fortnightly refuse collections, limited kerbside
collection capacity, and a short term option if there were any problems with operating the kerbside
service.
In the current situation, bring schemes are still a vital part in UK collection system, so it is important to
make some changes such as reducing collection service frequency and adopting appropriate containers
to improve its collecting performance.
3.1.4.5. Plastic film collection
Household plastic film collection has become gradually popular in these years. In 2012, 65 from total
407 local authorities provided plastic film collection service in UK. Figure 16 shows that 68% local
authorities offer kerbside only scheme for plastic film collection and 15% provides bring only scheme, 18%
covering both kinds of schemes.
Figure 16. Comparison of Local Authorities Plastic Film Collection Schemes
Source: UK Household Plastic Collection Survey, 2013
The responsibilities of local authorities in UK collection system
Collecting infrastructures provided by local authorities have a great influence in collection performance.
The decisions of providing proper collection schemes such as which kind of collection service should
offer, how many collection sites should be created, the best size of the collection containers and the
most appropriate frequency of plastic collection should be considered by local authorities and resident
demands, geographical factors should be taken into consideration. For example, data from the previous
years shows that kerbside schemes perform better than bring schemes (Figure 17), so the local
authorities were providing an increasing number of kerbside collection service and kept the number of
bring collection sites almost unchanged.
In general, the current mainly household plastic packaging collection schemes in UK are drop-off
collection and kerbside scheme. Even though drop-off collection is the traditional scheme that has a
longer history than that of kerbside scheme, kerbside scheme is more popular than bring scheme
currently because of its better performance in collecting wastes. However, bring scheme is still a vital
part in UK collection system. The experience from UK case shows that kerbside collection can be
implemented as the leading scheme in waste collection system, being coordinated by drop-off collection.
Meanwhile, local authorities play a significant role in performance of the collection system. The
responsibilities of local authorities should be attached enough attention.
Figure 17. Percentage of Household Plastics Packaging Collected through Kerbside and Bring
Schemes. Source: UK Household Plastic Collection Survey, 2013.
3.1.5. Plastic Recycling in Copenhagen
The city of Copenhagen is aiming to become the first carbon neutral capital in the world by the year
2025. In order to accomplish this target the city will have to divert 15,000 tons of plastic waste that
flows in the mixed waste stream, and afterwards ends up in the incineration plants, to the plastic
collection schemes by 2018. Copenhagen is a city that has around 283,000 of households, of which 90%
are flats.
Many of recent efforts towards plastic recycling have been conducted by the municipality of
Copenhagen in the recent years. Local authorities are in charge of the waste management system of the
city (excluding enterprises). In this frame, Plastic ZERO, a project carried out by eight partner
municipalities, companies and universities in Europe, has played an important role in the development
of new strategies regarding plastic disposal in the city of Copenhagen. Plastic ZERO started in September
2011 and ends in 2014.
The main objective of this project is to reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream for landfilling
and incineration in order to reduce non-renewable resources and promoting carbon neutral energy
production from waste. Plastic ZERO aims to enhance plastic waste prevention as well as encourage
plastic recycling by reducing the plastic waste that ends in the mixed waste and residual waste streams.
PlasticsEurope states that the highest use of plastic is packaging with a 38 % of total plastics. Preventing
plastic to enter the waste stream has a great potential and could be achieved by reducing plastic
content in packaging, increasing life cycle of products, reusing the products or endorsing behavioral
changes leading to non-plastic use.
Figure 18. Plastic recovery stages in the value chain from where plastic become waste until it becomes usable for manufacturing
new products. Source: (Plastic ZERO, 2012)
The city of Copenhagen in collaboration with Plastic ZERO has been focusing in the following activities:



Prevention, collection, sorting, reprocessing and use of recycled material.
Identification of barriers and solutions for improved plastic recycling practices at each part of
the value chain.
Cooperation with stakeholders involved in the value chain
Sorting and collection of plastic waste attempts to implement innovative methods for plastic waste
sorting and collection, as well as the conduction of consultancy and guidance for the private sector on
collection and sorting of this type of waste.
For this purpose, it is of great importance to identify cost-effective collection and sorting alternatives
that allow gathering plastics with better quality in order to use it in new plastic manufacturing. An
extensive review of existing technologies is required to identify the most convenient schemes to be
applied in the local conditions of Copenhagen. Such schemes are being tested in cooperation with
households, enterprises, waste collectors and waste facilities. (Plastic ZERO, 2012)
Once the best system is identified, the project aims to investigate the best plastic waste recycling
technologies based on life-cycle and market assessments. The project will evaluate if due to better
collection and sorting systems, it is worthy to create new European workplaces on plastic recycling and
recovery considering that nowadays most of plastic is recycled outside the EU.
The most attractive features from using recyclable plastic in the manufacturing of new products are
lower prices than new plastic, good quality (if properly collected and sorted) and a stable supply. In the
city of Copenhagen, there is a separate bin for plastic waste that collects rigid plastic (PET, HDPE, PP and
PS) as well as small pieces of plastic goods made of plastic such as furniture, boxes and housewares.
Plastic bags or films are not admitted in these bins due to complications associated with the sorting
processes, their low recyclable value and their low quality because they tend to be polluted. (Plastic
ZERO, 2012)
A kerbside collection system has already been implemented for hard plastics and other types of waste
such as metal and WEEE. 23,000 waste bins are distributed in 240,000 households in multi-story
buildings reaching approximately 440,000 inhabitants. (Skovgaard, October 2013)
Figure 19. Kerbside collection system in Copenhagen
The system is being implemented gradually, district by district. The plastic bottles are still collected by
the deposit-refund system. By 2015, it is expected to collect 1000 tons of plastic waste per year, which
corresponds to one sixth of the potential. It has been already concluded that the project is collecting
more plastic than initially thought with good quality of plastic waste collected.
The city counts with five large recycling stations that deal with 30 waste streams, and six small recycling
stations that deal with 12 waste streams. In the large recycling stations, there are big containers where
all rigid plastic items, including PVC are collected. The collected material is sorted afterwards due for
convenience of the users. People can bring their re-usable plastic milk and bread boxes to the recycling
stations. Likewise, non-rigid plastic is collected separately at some recycling stations. The waste sorting
takes place in material recovery facilities (MRF) and it is composed by several stages such as manual
sorting, size reduction, cleaning, drying, and performing an optical separation using NIR sensors or a
density separation.
A new technology for separating household residual waste, called the REinasence technology, is
currently being tested in Copenhagen. It is based on decomposing the biological components of the
waste utilizing enzymes that liquefy the organic waste while maintaining the solid fraction of materials
such as plastic, metal and glass. (Plastic ZERO, 2012)
Public awareness has played an important role in the success of plastic collection in the city. The
educational campaign “Recycling is gold” has being distributed in form of stickers and sorting guides on
over 196,000 households one week previous to the implementation of the system. There have been
several events near public venues which gather between 150-300 visitors each. The campaign expected
to be noticed by 55 % of the targeted population, but instead, it raised an awareness of 84 %. In order to
keep up the momentum, the campaign followed up by finding its place in newsletters, and advertising in
movie theatres.
Arla foods is cooperating with the Plastic ZERO project by setting a target of delivering 100% recyclable
packaging materials by 2020. They will redesign 10 kinds of packaging for their products, which will
enhance their recyclability by minimizing the amount of colours, types of materials, glue, sleeves and
implementing easily removable labels in their packages. Furthermore, the City of Copenhagen will
analyse the quality of the collected plastics in this new system, and will identify the barriers that are
facing their citizens in order to provide possible solutions.
Another effort for improvement of plastic recycling is reduction of black plastics, because it is difficult to
detect this polymer type in the NIR scanners at the sorting facilities. Around 10-15 % of rigid plastic
fraction is black.
Figure 20. Examples of black rigid plastic packaging in Denmark.
Source: (Skovgaard, October 2013)
Cooperation with various stakeholders such as plastic manufacturers, retailers, waste collectors,
manufacturers of sorting technologies and public procurement authorities is fundamental to accomplish
the black plastic packaging reduction. This goes in hand with increasing the public awareness of the
problem related with black plastic.
Tetra Pak produces around 2,600 tons of drink cartons in Copenhagen each year. It is important to
mention that around 20% of milk cartons consist in plastics. Tetra Pak has made an agreement that 75%
of their plastic is going to be recycled by 2018. Recycling one ton of drink cartons corresponds to saving
27 GJ of energy, which is 7 GJ more than if it was incinerated in energy recovery plants. (Skovgaard,
October 2013)
Copenhagen is confronting the plastic recycling challenge from diverse points and it is strongly
committed to accomplish their goal of becoming the first carbon neutral capital of the world. Some
considerations have been done so far, firstly that companies of the private sector are interested in
cooperating with this target but they express their preoccupation if they will have to change
substantially their products or production systems. Citizen’s participation has been better than expected
and so far the quality of the plastic collected looks promising.
Plastic waste collection is already being established in Copenhagen. The local authorities developed a
kerbside collection system for plastics. Prior to the implementation of the system, educational
advertisement such as stickers and sorting guides where provided to the households in order to explain
how to separate plastic waste in a successful way. Recycling stations and deposit-refund systems are
also playing an important role in the plastic waste collection scheme of the city. Films are received at
some of the recycling stations and are not allowed to be disposed in the plastic bin due to the
complications they might cause in the sorting stations.
Aalborg does not have any system for plastic waste collection, and even though there are plans for
implementing such systems i.e. Kærby experimental site, there are still much things to do (educational
campaigns, selection of system, investment on the infrastructure, etc) in order to make plastic waste
collection a reality in the city of Aalborg.
3.1.6. Comparison between countries
The following passage demonstrates the performance of waste management in Denmark relative to
some of its neighbour countries. Table 7 presents waste collection systems widely used in European
countries or cities discussed in the literature review of this study. Table 8 shows implemented collection
in this area among the countries. Out of six popular initiatives in waste management, Aalborg has only
three, whereas in such countries as Sweden, UK, Germany from five to six of them are implemented.
Table 9 compares amount of plastic recycling in European countries in the literature review of this study
by total and per capita. It is clear that the level in Denmark is much lower than in these countries. The
described two tables demonstrate how much potential for improving of waste management in general
and plastic recycling in particular Denmark has.
Table 7. Waste collection systems used in European countries and cities of the literature review
Collection system
Definition
Recyclable bags
 Citizens keep bags for their households to separate recyclable waste
from non-recyclables at houses into the bags.
 The bags must be tied their bags and place them outside of their houses
on collection days
Drop-off site
 Citizens bring recyclables to containers placed on streets or other public
spaces per several houses or one apartment building.
 Recyclable wastes in different categories are separated and put into
containers by citizens.
Kerbside collection
 Each household is given a set of kerbside bins with wheels.
 Citizens separate and put waste into different kerbside bins and put the
bins on streets in front of their houses.
Recycling centre
 Citizens bring recyclable waste to a recycling center located in the
neighborhood and separate the waste at the center.
Deposit-return system
 Citizens pay for deposit when purchasing products with plastic
packaging.
 The citizens get the deposit refunded when they return the recyclable
packaging to special devices located in the neighborhood.
Table 8. Comparison of municipal waste management systems in European countries
Aalborg,
Denmark
Copenhagen,
Sweden
Denmark
United
Kingdom
Netherlands
Germany
Recycling center
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Drop-off (Bring)
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Kerbside
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Recyclable bag
no
no
no
yes
yes
yes
Producer
Responsibility
no
no
yes
yes
Yes
yes
Deposit-return
yes
yes
yes
no
yes
yes
Table 9. Comparison of plastic recycling amounts in different countries in 2010.
Denmark
Total plastic recycling, kt/year
Population, million
kg/capita*year
5
5,59
0,89
Sweden
44
9,52
4,62
Netherlands
26
16,77
1,55
Germany
5141
81,89
62,78
UK
400
63,18
6,96
Sources: Municipal waste management Denmark, 2013; Municipal waste management Sweden, 2013; Municipal
waste management Netherlands, 2013; Municipal waste management Germany, 2013
The conducted literature review showed that Aalborg still has a lot to learn in waste management. In
different countries we can see different approaches to archive success. Every country has something
special in waste management which allows it to be proud for the system: Germans are separating waste
into nine fractions which involve usage of kerbside bins, drop-off containers and recycling centres.
British, however, managed to develop kerbside system so good that it is slowly substituting the rest of
collection schemes, and despite the fact that UK still has a relatively big landfilling rate, its plastic
recycling performance is much better than in Denmark. Dutchmen showed that new modern initiatives
like Waste Fund and unit based tax on waste instead of common weight based tax can be beneficial
even though they are making the system more complicated. Swedish are demonstrating a Scandinavian
approach to solve problems which is as it often happens is different from the rest of the EU – as a part of
producer responsibility principle producing companies are often responsible for disposing their products
after usage. Denmark is also not the last in waste management activities. Copenhagen’s Plastic ZERO
project is very ambitious and includes a lot of modern solutions. The plan to make such a big city carbon
neutral is looks more like dreams about far future than real aim approved by municipality.
After the analysis of literature review, we can conclude that there is no the exact advice how to improve
waste management system appropriate for all cases. Each country and city chooses its own path.
However it is impossible to find a successful experience in plastic recycling without a well-developed
separation process. So, we can assume that the setting a collection system for household plastic
packaging waste is a vital part of enhancing plastic recycling amounts in a city, and its presence in
Aalborg is our first recommendation. The study shows that the most popular system for this in other
countries is kerbside bins. Another feature which is in use in all studied countries is the producer
responsibility principle (Table 6). Each country is developing it in its own way; however it is always
present in national policy. So we can add it as the second recommendation. All the other
recommendations that can be offered based on the literature review like: setting more than usual threefour fractions for separating, using additional specific legislation, or an advice to use only a specific
collection system also seems to be proper. However it seems like these measures are not essential for
successful plastic waste recycling. For example landfilling tax is a popular and widespread legislation tool
to minimize landfilling amounts and motivate waste companies to invest in recycling and prevention,
but if we take look on Germany where there are no this tax and still the percent of landfilling is close to
zero. Therefore we can conclude that landfilling tax is not an obligatory initiative to archive low
landfilling rates. Another example is that separation system for different types of plastic seems to be a
very progressive measure because there are still many European cities which doesn’t have a separation
system for plastic at all; and we can see this system been implemented in Great Britain where they have
three different bins for different types of plastic. With such a system UK has good amounts of recycling
plastic per however German statistic is almost ten times better and Sweden is recycling per capita 66%
of UK’s amount (Table 7). It also shows that setting several bins for different types of plastic is not an
obligatory part of high recycling amounts. The same analysis can be done with the rest of national waste
management features. It is always possible to find a country which doesn’t have a particular measure
but is doing quite well. Therefore, in our opinion we cannot add these measures in our
recommendations as it is possible to archive high results without any of them. It doesn’t mean that the
recycling of plastic packaging can be established without any efforts. On the one hand it means that the
combination of different solutions is different in each country. It also shows that the task is relatively not
complicated and there are plenty of opportunities to complete it. On the other hand if we take a look on
Table 6, we can see six popular measures in waste management, if we take an integrated parameter of
the quantity of implemented measures, we can find a sort of relation between this parameter and
plastic recycling amounts. For example Denmark has three initiatives out of six, it is the worst mark in
Table 6, and Denmark also has the lowest amounts of plastic recycling in Table 7; Sweden has four “yes”
and is recycling more, Germany is the best in both cases. Of course it is rather a coincidence that
relation is so good, however it is demonstrating that despite the fact that each country has its own way
of dealing with waste and almost any particular measure cannot be considered as definitely necessary,
and an effective waste management is still a result of significant efforts introduction of a large number
of innovations. And the Copenhagen’s experience shows that there is no a too ambitious target.
Hence the overviewing of the other countries’ and cities’ business in waste management gave a lot of
useful information and reasons for formulating recommendations for Aalborg, just taking a successful
example of waste management in other city and implementing it in Aalborg would be a mistake because
another conditions can make a good system work with lower productivity or make it even impossible to
work. Some of such barriers we have discovered during the conducted interviews. Another possible bias
is that due to our limited timeframe we were able to study the waste systems in four countries
(excluding Denmark) which we consider to be the most important. However it is possible that some
other country has a very different system and has a lot of interesting measures been implemented, so
that after analysis of such a country we would have to change our conclusion dramatically. Basically the
threat of this bias is remaining until we study all the countries. Therefore in current project we have also
used interview and survey methods.
3.2. Interview
Interviewees in this study are chosen based on relevance of job roles of the interviewees and function of
the organisations to the research question in the study. Access of the interviewees to information
required in the study and professional experiences in their areas can provide insights into the regional
municipal waste management.
3.2.1. Aalborg Forsyning, Renovation
Thorsten Nord has been chief of Renovation Department, Public Utility Company for 24 years. The
company is the local waste management authority in charge of the collection and management of all
household waste in Aalborg, it offers advice and guidance of waste management to citizens and
businesses, and it is also in charge of the operation of various recycling centres in the region as well as
the preparation of regulations for local waste management.
Since September 2013 until March 2015, Renovation is undertaking three experimental sites to assess
how citizens comply with a new collection system that includes plastic waste. These experimental sites
are located in Kærby (429 family houses and over 200 flats), Vilsundvej (146 dwellings) and in
Dannebrogskollegiet (34 houses). Renovation has set focus on better sorting of plastic waste due to the
high amount of polluted plastic they have received thus far in their experimental sites. In a newsletter
wrote in November 2013, they stated: “A big part of the combustible waste could have been used for
recycling, if it had not been mixed by the wrongly sorted waste with bits of food on it. The most import
message is therefore: Everything has to be clean and free from scraps”. (Renovation, 2013). The
following table shows the barriers and possible solutions for implementing a successful plastic waste
collection system in Aalborg according to Thorsten.
Table 10. Identification of reasons of problems regarding plastic recycling in Denmark and suggestion of solutions of the
problems by the interviewee Thorsten Nord.
Barriers
Implication of barriers
Suggestions for solution
Lack of information about
how to sort household plastic
waste.
Consequence
Quality of household plastic waste
tends to be low due to presence of
contaminants in the collected
plastic material.
Educational campaigns and
guidelines to clean the plastic and
sort it in the proper way.
Absence of plastic recycling
facilities in the whole region
of North Jutland.
Reason
Denmark has only one plastic
waste collection point located in
South Jutland. The plastic
collected by the Municipality of
Aalborg is sent to Germany where
it will be recycled.
National plans to build three or
four collection and sorting
facilities around the country. One
in Zealand, one in Funen and one
or two in Jutland.
Collection of plastic waste is
economically inconvenient.
Reason
Collection, transport, outsourcing,
and abroad factory costs represent
high investments in order to get
rid of Aalborg’s household plastic
waste.
Improving the quality of the
collected plastic and sorting it in a
better way will lower the costs of
recycling plastic waste. The
construction of recycling factories
in the country when the amount
and quality of the material is good
enough to justify the investments.
Nord’s ideal solution for collecting household plastic packaging waste in Aalborg is to expand the
deposit-refund system for other types of plastic products such as bags and food containers. He defined
such scheme as a “self-cleaning system”.
Finally, it is important to mention that lack of commitment from the municipal waste management of
the city to collect plastic waste was perceived from the interview, which was exposed by skepticism on
the implementation of a plastic waste collection system in the coming years and the interest in other
types of collectable materials such as electronics. When asked about the consequences of not
accomplishing the EU and national demands for implementing this new collection system, the
interviewee mentioned that the national government will intervene and will give the directions for
achieving the goal.
3.2.2. Copenhagen Research Institute
Profile of the interviewee
The interviewee, Birgitte Kjær, was selected due to the relevance between the topic of the study and
her researches and activities during her career. The interviewee is currently working as deputy director
at the Copenhagen Resource Institute. She manages various projects concerning waste management in
cooperation with clients such as the Danish EPA, Nordic retailer project and ETC/SCP. She also manages
external conferences to gather opinions about resource utilization and waste management from
different experts and stakeholders. Specific focus area of the interviewee currently is waste prevention
in packaging and food waste, end-of-waste criteria and bioenergy potential from waste. During her
career at the Danish Environmental Agency, she was responsible for projects concerning recycling or
management of packaging waste, the EU directive on packaging and packaging waste, regulation for
waste management and so on.
Questions and answers
Questions for the interview with Birgitte Kjær were modified to get further information based on the
interview with Thorsten Nord. The interview was conducted through a phone call which lasted
approximately 35 minutes. Questions and introduction to the interview were provided to the
interviewee prior to the interview in a computerized format, which can be found in Appendix 1. The
conversation during the interview was transcribed for analysis.
The interview was started with a relatively general question asking reasons of low recycling rate of
plastics in Denmark compared to other European countries. She answered “we have a lot of incineration,
so I think it has not been a push to recycling a little bit more”. This is in connection with the policy of
Denmark to increase recycling of waste instead of decreasing incineration as clarified in the Danish
waste strategy (The Danish Government, 2013). From this opinion, the necessity of the Danish waste
management to tackle dependency on waste incineration was pointed out again.
As another reason, the interviewee answered “the policy in Denmark to collect all the good quality
plastic waste”. She also commented as follows: On the contrary to the quantitative targets stated in the
EU directives, household waste management in Denmark has focused on collecting plastic waste with
high quality and recyclability; this difference has resulted in the quantitatively low recycling rate of
plastics in Denmark.
In the previous interview with Thorsten Nord, it was stated that processing of plastic waste, such as
sorting, transporting and cleaning, after collection from households restricts plastic waste recycling
because they require expenses. Considering these answers from the two interviewees, it is necessary to
find solutions to improve quantity and quality, at the same time, of plastic waste collected from
households. By this improvement, recycling companies would have more supply of plastic waste and
spend less cost for sorting. This would promote the recycling market in Denmark to recycle more plastics
be a contribution to improved plastic recycling in Denmark.
As a suggestion for such solution, she recommended more source separation or sorting facilities with
better performance. She thought that high performance of source separation and sorting facilities is a
precondition of increased recycling of plastic waste. She pointed out that municipalities “need to have a
very clear instruction for source separation”.
In the second question, the interviewee was asked to suggest solutions to improve the recycling rate of
household plastic packaging waste in a situation where there are not enough sorting and recycling
plants for the waste fraction. The interviewee corrected the question and said that there are many
recycling plants in Denmark. She continued and agreed that, however, there are not enough number of
sorting facilities in Denmark. She answered that plastic sorting or recycling facilities go through business
difficulties because “Denmark is a small country and the amount of house packaging waste we have will
not be maybe sufficient”. This is in agreement with the point reported by Plastic ZERO (Larsen Anna &
Skovgaard Mette, 2012). As mentioned in the chapter 1.6. Different types of plastics, there are a lot of
types of plastics and they need to be separated before mechanical recycling processes. She also
indicated this as a difficulty in plastic recycling. She said that plastic recycling factories take only plastic
waste from industries because they are well sorted and clean. For the solution of this problem with
sorting and recycling facilities, she was not certain and did not answer. However, she expressed her
opinion that the effectiveness of plastics sorting industry would be dependent on economic conditions
of the market, such as costs of sorting and prices of the sorted plastics. Table 11 shows points made
during the interview regarding the problems of plastic waste recycling rate and plastic recycling facilities.
Table 11. Identification of reasons of problems regarding plastic recycling in Denmark and suggestion of solutions of the
problems by the interviewee Birgitte Kjær
Barriers
Reasons of barriers
Suggestions for solution
Question 1
Low recycling rate
of plastic waste in
Denmark
 “We have a lot of incineration, so
I think it has not been a push to
recycling a little bit more.”
 the policy in Denmark that focuses
on good quality plastic waste
 Increased source separation or
sorting facilities with higher
performance
 clear instruction for source
separation provided to citizens
Question 2
Not enough
facilities for plastic
waste recycling
• “Denmark is a small country and
the amount of house packaging
waste we have will not be maybe
sufficient.”
 Recycling plants do not take
household plastic packaging waste
because they are not sorted to high
quality.
-
These opinions from the interviewee supported the purpose of this study to develop collection systems
that promote source separation of household plastic waste. The interview also suggested another task
of plastic waste collection system, which is to ensure high quality of the collected plastic waste. By
providing citizens with accessible collection systems and clear instructions about how to sort plastic
waste, both amount and quality of plastic waste collection can be increased. For better qualities of
collected plastic waste, plastic packaging waste need to be cleaned and different types of plastic
materials need to be separated.
The next question asked the interviewee to rank six waste collection systems in Europe ( 1) recyclable
bag 2) drop-off 3) kerbside 4) recycling centre 5) deposit-return system and 6) producer responsibility)
based on their practicability for plastic packaging waste collection in Denmark.
The interviewee did not answer this question because 5) deposit-return system already exists in
Denmark and 6) producer responsibility are not comparable to other options. She responded that the
producer responsibility is incomparable to options as the system requires other collection programs
implemented together with it. Ranking between options 1-4 from the perspective of the interviewee
could be obtained, but it was not conducted due to time constraints and to respect the time schedule of
the interviewee. Instead, she gave us opinions about each of the options, especially advantages and
disadvantages of them (Table 12). These opinions correspond to the information that the next subquestion was designed to get.
Table 12. Advantages and disadvantages of six collection systems in Europe by the interviewee
Collection system
Recyclable bag
Drop-off
Kerbside
Advantages
Disadvantages
-
 Many citizens would not want to
have recyclable bags inside their
houses.
-
 less amount of collection than
kerbside
 inconvenience due to distance
from houses
 the highest amount of collection
with this system is expected
 easiness
-
Recycling centre
 the most inexpensive way
 small amount of collection
 inconvenience due to long distance
from houses
Deposit-return
 applicable for containers of beer,
soft drink and wine bottles
 quality of collected plastic waste is
best among given options
 unsuitable for some packaging,
especially ones with large volumes
 can be a way of financing municipal
waste collection
 Producers in Europe have not
changed packaging but only hired
businesses to manage packaging
waste
 Suggestion: pressure for individual
producers to change packaging to
be more recyclable
Producer
responsibility
The interviewee said that kerbside is expected to collect the most amount of plastic waste because of
easiness for use that the system has. Disadvantages of other collection systems were indicated by the
interviewee. She mentioned that citizens would not prefer recyclable bags because they want to keep
waste away from them. Drop-off system and recycling centres were judged as inconvenient due to
relatively long distances from houses. However, recycling centre had an advantage as the most
inexpensive collection system. According to the interviewee, deposit-return system collects plastic
waste of good quality because the collected plastic waste is homogeneous. However, this system can
mostly be used only for beverage containers. Producer responsibility can be a way to finance packaging
waste management because it entitles producers to subsidise collection and treatment of the packaging
waste. However, the interviewee pointed out that this policy, so far, has not effective made profound
changes in designs of packaging in European countries that have had the policy implemented. She said
that, therefore, instruments to pressure individual producers to change packaging to be more recyclable
are needed.
3.2.3 Comparison of two interviews
Specific ways to achieve this goal suggested by the two interviewees were providing citizens with clear
instructions about how to sort plastic waste. Kjær recommended accessible and easy-to-use collection
systems in residential areas and Nord recommended expansion of deposit-return system to other types
of plastic packaging.
However, Kjær insisted that although deposit-return system collects plastic waste of good quality and
homogeneousity, this system can mostly be used only for beverage containers. She expected that
kerbside would show the best performance in terms of amount of plastic packaging waste collection. On
the other hand, she judged drop-off system and recycling centres as inconvenient due to relatively long
distances from houses. However, she also mentioned inexpensive costs for recycling centres had as the
most inexpensive collection system.
3.3. Questionnaire
In this chapter, results from questionnaire survey in Aalborg city are presented for discussions.
Questions in the questionnaires were formulated based on knowledge from the literature review and
interviews in this study. Themes studied by the questionnaire survey were waste behaviours of citizens
in Aalborg, attitude of the citizens towards waste recycling and incineration, motivations and barriers to
separation of plastic waste and preferences for suggested waste collection systems. The survey was
conducted at different locations in Aalborg, such as libraries, streets, cafes, buses and households. The
questionnaire used for the survey is included in Appendix 2.
The questionnaire survey gathered responses from 148 citizens who live in Aalborg. The research
targeted citizens with Danish nationality but the questionnaire could not include a question for the
information. The confidence interval, calculated using the equation (3), was 8 % since the final sample
size was 148 people, which was lower than expected for achieving a confidence interval of 5 % (383
people). The equation (2) from 2. Method was not used in this study because the calculated sample size
for the questionnaire was lower than 5% of the city population.
Distribution of age, gender and housing types of respondents were analysed (Figure 21 and 22) and
compared with the data of Aalborg city (City of Aalborg, 2012). To some extent, the sample has similar
distributions of age and gender with the population of the city. The compositions of housing type in the
sample and population are very similar to each other. Thus, the sample represents opinions of citizens in
Aalborg with similar age, gender and housing type compositions to the original population. Response
rates for questions in the questionnaire were over 95 %, except for one question. The question failed to
get answers from a part of respondents because it was not easily understandable, thus the data from
this question is not discussed.
> 70
60-69
50-59
Female
Male
40-49
30-29
20-29
< 20
0
(a)
10
20
30
(b)
Figure 21. Age and gender distribution of city of Aalborg (a, Source: (City of Aalborg, 2012)) and the sample of the
questionnaire survey (b)
8%
3%
Detached house/farmhouses
35%
Terraced, linked or semi-detached
houses
Multi-dwelling houses
Student hostels
Residential buildings for
communities
Cottages
47%
8%
(a)
Figure 22. Distribution of city of Aalborg (a, Source: (City of Aalborg, 2012)) and the sample of the
questionnaire survey (b)Distribution of housing types
(b)
According to the results of the questionnaire research, citizens in Aalborg currently use residual waste
bins most frequently to discard non-bottle plastic packaging waste (Table 13). The severity index (SI) of
using residual waste bins for this fraction of waste is significantly higher than those for other systems.
On the other hand, plastic bottles are very frequently returned to deposit-return systems in Aalborg,
showing large differences between the SI figures for other collection systems. This result indicates the
effectiveness of economic incentive that the deposit-return system has. The recycling centre showed the
lowest figure of SI, which implies that citizens do not prefer using this system. The reason of this low
preference can be inconvenience due to long distances from houses to the centres, as Kjær suggested in
the interview. This will be discussed in later questions (Table 16).
In contrast to expectation of this study, respondents answered that they currently use collection bins
dedicated for plastic packaging waste. This is in disagreement with the fact that such system does not
exist in Aalborg. One of the respondents wrote on a questionnaire that he uses separate plastic waste
collection bins located at a petroleum station. From this, it can be deduced that there are systems by
private entities which could not be identified in this study. Another reason for this disagreement can be
due to misunderstanding of respondents about the question. Clear explanation about the separate
plastic waste collection bin was not provided in this question, which must be considered as a limitation
of this study.
Table 13. Current use of collection systems for household plastic waste by citizens in Aalborg
Question: “How often do you throw away plastic packaging waste after consuming or purchasing products at your house in the
following ways?”
Very
Very
Frequeb
c
Rare Neutral
frequerarea
ntlyd
ntlye
Total
SI
Non bottle
Residual waste bin
12
13
15
31
77
148 75%
Separate bin for plastic waste
91
20
19
13
5
148 20%
Recycling centre
93
18
17
17
3
148 19%
Residual waste bin
76
24
15
21
12
148 28%
Separate bin for plastic waste
81
20
16
21
9
147 26%
Recycling centre
93
25
8
11
10
147 19%
Deposit-return
16
9
13
29
81
148 75%
Plastic bottle
SI: Severity Index
SI = (0×a+1×b+2×c+3×d+4×e)/(4×(a+b+c+d+e))
Another question asked respondents if they clean plastic packaging wastes before they discard them.
86 % of them replied that they do not clean them while 14 % replied that they do. This result indirectly
shows that, if the municipality requires citizens in Aalborg to clean their plastic packaging waste at
source, a portion of citizens in Aalborg would comply with the requirement, which contributes to
better quality of plastic packaging waste. However, this cannot directly suggest how high the
possibility would be because this question did not ask about willingness of citizens to comply with the
requirement.
In the next question, the willingness of citizens to comply with a suggested requirement for plastic
packaging waste separation (Table 9). This question was based on the necessity of well sorted plastic
packaging waste for better efficiency of recycling. 63 % of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed
that they would separate different types of plastics as required. Unlike the previous finding, this result
clearly shows that a considerable portion of citizens in Aalborg have positive attitudes to participating
in separation of plastic packaging waste into multiple fractions.
Table 14. Willingness of respondents to comply with requirement to sort plastic packaging waste into
different types
Question: “If you are requested to separate different types of plastics as follows, would you comply
with it?
You are provided with a plastic waste bin with partition in your neighbourhood, and are requested to
separate types of plastic waste into the partition for each type such as PET, PE-HD, PVC and Other.”
Number of
respondents
Strongly disagreea
Disagreeb
Neutralc
Agreed
Strongly agreee
Total response
SI
3
14
38
52
41
148
75%
Percentage
2%
9%
26%
35%
28%
-
SI: Severity Index
SI = (0×a+1×b+2×c+3×d+4×e)/(4×(a+b+c+d+e))
A study in Denmark conducted a questionnaire survey about attitudes of the Danish (DARE2, 2013). The
study asked a set of questions to identify attitudes of citizens towards waste sorting and categorised the
citizens into four types of attitude, namely idealism, convenience, pragmatism and indifference. The
current study asked similar questions in a compressed form and identified the attitudes of citizens in
terms to waste separation. In addition to the four categories in the study by DARE2, the current study
intended to identify citizens who consider economic benefits important when they sort waste.
As expected in this study, lack of accessible facilities (62 %) was the biggest barrier that citizens in
Aalborg recognise when they sort plastic packaging waste (Table 13). This was followed by lack of
information about how and where to sort the waste, lack of regulatory requirement, inconvenience of
separation and the others. 5 % of citizens or less replied that they are not interested in waste separation
or think that it is not important to them. This figure is even lower than the percentage of people who
are indifferent in waste sorting in Denmark indicated by DARE2 (2013), which is positive to the waste
management of the city.
78 % of respondents selected the environmental protection as motivation to separate plastic packaging
waste (Table 10). Moreover, 47 % of them replied that they separate plastic packaging waste because
they feel socially responsible to do it. In the study by DARE2 (2013), more than 80 % of citizens agreed
with statements "If there are multiple bins, then I will definitely use them", "we should recycle as much
as possible","when I sort, I make a difference to the environment", "if I know that it makes a difference,
then I want to sort more". These results verified the positive attitude of the Danish, especially citizens in
Aalborg, towards the environmental protection.
Table 15. Barriers and motivations that restrict or encourage respondents to separate household plastic packaging waste.
Question: “Please choose one or more statements that describes you. I feel discouraged/motivated to separate plastic
packaging waste from my house, since”
Barrier
Number of
respondents
percentage
A. There are no accessible facilities for separation in
my neighbourhood
92
62 %
B. I do not know how or where to separate it
58
39 %
C. It is inconvenient to separate it
24
16 %
D. I am not required to separate it by regulations
26
18 %
E. I am not interested in separating it
6
4%
F. I do not think that recycling is important to me
7
5%
G. Recycling does not give me any benefits
7
5%
H. Other
2
1%
Total response
Motivation
1) Recycling saves the environment
148
Number of
respondents
Percentage
116
78 %
2) I feel socially responsible to separate it
70
47 %
3) I am required to separate it by regulations
24
16 %
4) It is simple and easy to separate it
30
20 %
5) Facilities for separation are accessible
27
18 %
6) Recycling gives me benefits
28
19 %
3
148
2%
7) Other
Total response
16 % and 20 % of the respondents indicated that they are motivated to sort plastic packaging waste
when “it is simple and easy to separate it” and “facilities for separation are accessible” respectively.
Waste collection facilities which are simple, easy and accessible would not only motivate these portions
of citizens to sort plastic packaging waste, but also increase participation rate of other citizens.
Table 13 shows numbers of respondents in categories of attitudes about separation of plastic waste. The
categories of attitudes were defined based on selection of barriers and motivations. The category
‘Idealism’ is a group of respondents who selected motivation 1) and 2) but did not select barrier A, B, C
and G. Citizens in the category understand the environmental benefits of recycling and feel socially
responsible to make the benefits happen. They do not recognise inconvenience in separating plastic
packaging waste or lack of economic benefits from recycling as important reasons to feel discouraged to
sort the waste. A portion of citizens in the category know how and where to separate the plastic waste.
Also, they already have accesses to facilities for separation of plastic waste or do not think that lack of
accessible facilities is a factor that hinders them from separating the waste. They are ready to
proactively participate in collection schemes offered by the municipality and take the largest portion of
the respondents. Especially, citizens who feel socially responsible for recycling and does not consider
economic benefits as an important factor was 45 %.
Citizens in the category ‘Convenience’ selected motivation 1) and 2) and barrier A, B and C. They
understand the importance of recycling plastic packaging and feel responsible to do it, but they find the
lack of facilities or information required for waste sorting as a barrier. Providing them with accessible
facilities, information and easy ways to separate plastic packaging waste can greatly promote them to
sort the waste and help recycling it. Especially, citizens who feel socially responsible to sort the waste
but cannot easily do it because there are not accessible facilities (motivation 1), barrier A., 46
respondents) was 31 % of the sample.
The percentage of citizens who are indifferent in waste sorting was low (< 5 respondents, < 3 %), which
is a much lower figure than in the study by DARE2. The respondents in this category selected motivation
4), 5) and 6) and barrier E and F. They think that waste recycling is not important to them or not
interested in it. However, they feel motivated to separate the waste when separation procedure is easy
and simple, facilities are accessible and the separation gives them economic benefits.
Citizens in Pragmatism with regulatory requirements as both the motivation and barrier were 5 % of the
sample (motivation 3), barrier D.). Although the number of citizens in the category is small, nearly half of
citizens answered that they do not feel motivated to separate the waste because they are not required
to do it by regulations (47 %, barrier D.). Similarly, the category Economy (motivation 6), barrier G.)
accounted only for 2 % of the sample, but lack of economic benefits from waste separation was a barrier
of 47 % of the sample (barrier G.). These results suggest that establishing regulatory requirement and
economic incentives for waste separation can greatly improve the participation of citizens in Aalborg.
Especially, economic pathways that brings benefits for citizens from recycling of plastics and efficient
resource use would work as a significant motivation to citizens. Also, providing citizens with clear
information that the recycling directly and indirectly gives them economic benefits is important.
The study by DARE2 defined respondents clearly into four categories of attitudes and obtained
percentages of each category by asking more than 20 questions regarding attitudes. In the current study,
however, the questions were simple and allowed multiple choices. Therefore, one respondent can fall
into more than one category.
Table 16. Categorisation of Attitudes based on selections of barriers (column) and motivations (row) to household plastic
packaging waste separation and number of respondent in the categories
Motivation
Idealism
Barrier No to A.
1)
2)
Out of total sample
32
24
55 (37 %)
No to B.
67
34
89 (60 %)
No to C.
No to G.
100
57
123 (83 %)
Out of total sample
112
116 (78 %)
67
70 (47 %)
142 (95 %)
Convenience
Barrier A.
B.
C.
1)
84
49
16
2)
46
36
13
4)
20
12
8
5)
23
11
5
Out of total sample
94 (62 %)
58 (39 %)
24 (16 %)
Out of total sample
116 (78 %)
70 (47 %)
30 (20 %)
27 (18 %)
Indifference
Barrier E.
F.
4)
2
2
5)
2
2
6)
5
5
Out of total sample
8 (47 %)
9 (47 %)
Out of total sample
30 (20 %)
27 (18 %)
28 (19 %)
Pragmatism
Barrier D.
3)
8
Out of total sample
28 (47 %)
Out of total sample
24 (16 %)
Economy
Barrier G.
6)
Out of total sample
3
7 (47 %)
Out of total sample
28 (19 %)
See Table 13 for description of barriers and motivations
Idiealism: respondents who selected motivation 1) and 2) but did not select barrier A, B, C and G
Convenience: respondents who selected motivation 1) and 2) and barrier A, B and C
Indifference: respondents who selected motivation 4), 5) and 6) and barrier E and F
Pragmatism: respondents who selected motivation 3) and barrier D
Economy: respondents who selected motivation 6) and barrier G
Out of total sample: number of respondents out of the total sample who selected or did not select the barriers or
motivations
Perception of citizens in Aalborg about the waste recycling and incineration were evaluated (Table 14).
Citizens were asked how beneficial the waste recycling and incineration are to the community of
Aalborg city. It was expected that citizens would prefer the incineration to recycling because they are
satisfied with the current waste incineration system and district heat supply. According to the result,
however, they think that recycling (SI 82 %) is more beneficial than incineration (SI 71 %) to the
community. The questionnaire also asked citizens in what aspects those waste treatment system benefit
the city. Energy saving, resource saving, environmental protection, economic benefit, public image of
the city and others were given for choices.
Percentages of respondents who answered that waste recycling are beneficial to the city for every
aspect given in the question are higher than the figures for waste incineration (Figure 23). Especially, the
figures for recycling in resource saving, environmental protection are significantly higher than those for
incinerations. These results imply that citizens in Aalborg are aware that recycling is more beneficial to
the environment and resource use. They also show that the national policies to increase recycling and
decrease waste incineration are likely to encounter positive responses and compliances from citizens.
However, there is a possibility where respondents did not clearly understand the meaning of
incineration in the question because the questionnaires were written in English and majority of
respondents were Danish. This could lead a part of respondents to answer ‘neutral’ in the question
about incineration. Another limitation of this finding is that phrases in the question did not include
‘household plastic packaging waste’ and therefore could not be specific for the waste fraction.
Table 17. Perception of citizens in Aalborg about the waste recycling and incineration
Question: “Do you think that waste recycling/incineration is beneficial to the
community of Aalborg city? Please rate your agreement.”
Recycling
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
Total respond
SI
0
3
19
58
68
148
82%
Incineration
3
10
42
46
45
146
71%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90% 100%
Energy saving
Resource saving
Environmental protection
Recycling
Incineration
Economic benefit
Public image of the city
Other
Figure 23. Beneficial aspects which citizens think that waste recycling and incineration have
Question: “In what way do you think recycling and incineration of waste benefit the community of Aalborg city?”
Preference of citizens towards six different system or a policy for collection of household plastic
packaging waste was evaluated (Table 15). Definition of each system or policy was presented with the
question. SI of every item in this question was over 50 %, which means that citizens generally have
willingness to separate plastic packaging waste. On the contrary to the report that kerbside showed the
best performance for plastic waste collection in the UK (Morgan, 2013), citizens did not prefer kerbside
system the most. This could be due to unclear understanding of citizens about the kerbside in the
questionnaire. This is because a part of respondents were not given the questionnaires to read them
thoroughly but were asked to orally answer the questions. However, the SI figure for kerbside was not
significantly lower than those for recyclable bags, drop-off and deposit-return system. Recyclable bags
and deposit-return system had the highest SI figures (73 %), but again with an insignificant difference.
Overall, recycling centre and fee on unseparated waste were marked with the lowest preference by
citizens, while a significant portion of respondents answered that they would separate plastic packaging
waste if they had recyclable bags, deposit-return system, drop-off prepared for waste collection. This
result again verifies the necessity of facilities or instruments for citizens to separate plastic packaging
waste. Considering the fact that recycling centre is the only way for citizens in Aalborg to separate
plastic packaging waste, implementation of the collection schemes preferred by the respondents would
effectively promote collection of the waste fraction.
The questionnaire failed to verify reasons of the preferences to each of system or policy given in the
question because a question had errors in phrases and information given to respondents. Also, as this
questionnaire only investigated preferences about collection schemes, this result cannot give valid
prediction about actual performances of the schemes.
Table 18. Preference
If you have the following systems in your neighbourhood, would you separate plastic packaging waste from your house?
What factors affected your rating for each system? You can choose more than one.
Strongly
disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly
agree
Total
Response
SI
1) Recyclable bags
4
8
27
64
42
145
73%
2) Drop-off system
3
11
31
66
36
147
71%
3) Kerbside
3
7
55
48
32
145
67%
4) Recycling centre
9
25
37
52
20
143
59%
5) Deposit-Return system
6
7
28
60
46
147
73%
18
31
40
32
24
145
52%
6) Fee on unseparated waste
Lastly, distances between households and waste collection facilities that citizens would agree to travel
to use them were investigated (Figure 24). 30 % of the respondents replied that they would travel more
than 200 m. Apart from that group of respondents, 50-100 m of distance had the most number of
respondents. The weighted average of the distances was roughly calculated based on number of
respondents. It was calculated using middle number of each option with the equation as follows:
Average =
10 × 𝑎 + 35 × 𝑏 + 75 × 𝑐 + 125 × 𝑑 + 175 × 𝑒
𝑎+𝑏+𝑐+𝑑
a: number of responses to < 20 m
b: number of responses to 20 - 50 m
c: number of responses to 50 -100 m
d: number of responses to 100 -150 m
e: number of responses to 150 -200 m
The group of respondents who selected > 200 m was omitted from the calculation since the middle
number of the option is infinite, which leads the average to the infinite. The calculated average of
distance was 75.5 m. Calculating the area of a circle with 75.5 m, the average area covered by one waste
collection facility is 4477 m2. Dividing the area of the city of Aalborg by this average area, the city
requires 8371 waste collection sites, which is an enormous figure. This figure is an underestimation of
the average area as the group of respondents how selected > 200 m. Compared to “1,800 containers for
paper and about 500 for glass” (The Public Utility Companies, 2004), the number of required collection
sites obtained from this data is overwhelmingly higher. This results implies that the current number of
collection sites in Aalborg is lower than demands from citizens. However, offering such a lot of number
of collection site is unrealistic. Although this result is based on rough estimations, it suggests that the
municipality of Aalborg needs to add kerbside to the waste collection scheme as an alternative to dropoff collection site. The kerbside will allow citizens to discard plastic packaging waste in front of
households and travel short distances.
0
10
20
30
40
50
%
< 20 m
20 - 50 m
50 -100 m
100 -150 m
150 -200 m
> 200 m
Figure 24. Longest distance from households to waste collection facilities that citizens would travel to separate household waste
Question: “What is the longest distance you would agree to walk from your house to public waste bins in order to discard your
waste?”
4. Conclusion and recommendation
Barriers to promoting recycling of household plastic packaging waste were identified: low quality of
plastic waste due to contamination and mixture of different types of plastics; lack of plastic waste
sorting plants; low economic profits for plastic sorting companies and lack of information about how to
sort household plastic waste.
It is necessary to find solutions to improve quantity and quality, at the same time, of plastic waste
collected from households. By this improvement, recycling companies would have more supply of plastic
waste and spend less cost for sorting. This would promote the recycling market in Denmark to recycle
more plastics and be a contribution to improved plastic recycling in Denmark.
In order to collect plastic packaging waste in cleaner and better separated conditions, more source
separation or sorting facilities with better performance are needed.
The recycling centre showed the lowest figure of SI, which implies that citizens do not prefer using this
system. The reason of this low preference can be inconvenience due to long distances from houses to
the centres, as Kjær suggested in the interview.
The majority of the respondents for the questionnaire developed in this study were motivated by
environmental protection. Contrary to what was expected at the beginning of the project, people would
prefer to recycle plastic waste rather than using it on incineration plants.
The number of required collection sites obtained from preferred distances between households and
them is overwhelmingly higher than the number of containers currently distributed in Aalborg. This
implies that the current number of collection sites in Aalborg is lower than demands from citizens.
However, offering such a lot of number of collection site is unrealistic. Although this is based on rough
estimations, it suggests that the municipality of Aalborg should consider adding kerbside to the waste
collection scheme as an alternative to the current collection system. Kerbsides will allow citizens to
discard plastic packaging waste in front of households and travel short distances as supported by Kjær.
Additionally, as an analysis of this collection system in the UK showed in the literature review, kerbsides
are likely to have a good performance.
Therefore, this study suggests the municipality of Aalborg to add three types of collection systems for
household plastic packaging waste, namely recyclable bags, kerbside, drop-off, to the current scheme.
As the result of the questionnaire in this study showed, citizens preferred those three collection systems,
and they will be a suitable combination with the deposit-refund system currently working in Aalborg.
Even though recycling centres were not among the four options that citizens preferred the most, they
still can contribute to a successful plastic packaging waste collection system in a cost-efficient way.
Analysing the answers to the questionnaire, the majority of the citizens could be categorized as idealistic,
who cherish the environmental protection and do not find it inconvenient to separate plastic waste even
if they do not receive economic benefits from it. This implies that they are highly likely to cooperate
with the new waste separation programme offered by the municipality.
As expected in this study, lack of accessible facilities (62 %) was the biggest barrier that Aalborg’s
citizens recognised when they were asked about sorting plastic packaging waste. Half of those
respondents (31 %) answered that they feel socially responsible to separate plastic waste. This type of
respondents fall into the category ‘Convenience’ who are aware of the importance of plastic recycling
but consider lack of infrastructure for collecting plastic waste as a barrier.
A considerable amount of the respondents (47 %) considered that lack of economic benefits is a barrier
to waste sorting behaviours. This could be countered by identifying economic pathways that bring such
benefits to citizens from efficient resource use by plastic recycling, which requires attention in further
relevant studies. Providing citizens with clear information regarding direct and indirect benefits they
acquire from recycling could enhance their participation level.
In order to improve household plastic packaging recycling rates in Denmark, it is highly recommended
that the Government request from the municipality’s investment of resources in educational campaigns
that promote better at source cleaning and separation practices, to enhance the quality and the value of
the household plastic packaging waste collected. Parallel to this, the municipalities should consider the
implementation of various plastic collection systems such as recycle bags, drop-off sites and kerbside.
The present study recommends conducting a cost benefit analysis as well as a LCA for the construction
of plastic sorting and recycling plants distributed near the most highly populated areas in Denmark,
where the collected plastic could be realigned in specific categories by professionals cleaned and stored
until it is delivered to the recycling plants. This should be done after collection systems have been
successfully established in Denmark, thus guaranteeing a stable plastic waste supply.
It is recommended for further studies to set appointments with a wider range of stakeholders such as
plastic packaging producers, plastic waste treatment plants and Danish environmental authorities in
order to better understand their interest and level of compromise to develop a plastic waste collection
system in Aalborg.
The current study had a small number of respondents (148) and its confidence interval was 8 %, which is
higher than the initially targeted (5%), thus it is recommended to conduct a similar survey and that
reaches a lower confidence interval of 5 % to lesser variations in the results.
It is also recommended to conduct the survey around all the neighbourhoods of Aalborg to gather more
meaningful results for the entire city and deliver more representative conclusions at the end of the
study.
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Appendix 1.
Questions and interview proceeding material used in the
interview with Birgitte Kjær from Copenhagen Resource
Institute
Appendix 2.
Questionnaire for investigation of opinions of citizens in
Aalborg about separation and collection of plastic packaging
waste