Flexible Plastic Packaging Capture - MRF Quality Control

Flexible Plastic Packaging, or FPP, is a valuable resource that can be repurposed. It can also be an awkward contaminant to quality waste streams and recovering it can be a challenge.

Plastic flexible packaging or film is still a major consideration for waste management facilities and is present in most household waste streams. It has low value when compared with other major streams such as fiber, metals, or rigid plastics, but it still needs to be separated.

The Impact Airlift system has been designed to work in conjunction with optical separators which are generally utilised to not only grade rigid polymer types, but increasingly to quality control fibre, OCC (old, corrugated containers), and rigid plastic streams. The Airlift system is a method of capturing the rejected materials as the optic targets them, sucking out the flexible packaging and film whilst the material is in flight. The collected film is pneumatically conveyed through ductwork and discharged in a central location for storage, baling or further separation.

For plants without optical sorters, the same process stands, but with an alternative setup, collecting from a conveyor or screen, therefore enabling all waste operators to achieve a higher quality material stream.

By working closely with optical separator suppliers, plant builders and MRF operators, Impact Air Systems have been able to optimise the separation efficiency and capture rates, maximising film collection rates, whilst minimising losses of major commodity stream such as fibre, OCC, and rigid plastics such as container, pots, tubs, and trays.

Impact’s Airlift ensures high quality material streams along with increased revenue from recovered recyclable materials while enabling the operator to meet their zero waste targets.

There has been particular interest in the UK and USA for the Impact Airlift, with 13 systems installed throughout 2024.

The benefits of Impact’s Airlift solution include:

• Improves the quality of the material stream by effectively removing FPP
• Reduces maintenance of downstream machinery due to FPP blockages
• Potential to increase film and flexible packaging recovery to be used as a fuel source
• Significantly reduces manual sorting labour requirements and costs
• Significantly improves the performance of downstream processes by removing unwanted/tangling contaminants
• High material throughput capabilities