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Swiss collect over 9,000 tonnes of plastic for recycling in 2024

Over 9000 tons of plastic collected for recycling in 2024
Over 9,000 tonnes of plastic collected for recycling in 2024. Keystone-SDA

Plastic collection in Switzerland continues to gain ground. In 2024, consumers recycled 9,090 tonnes of plastic. More than 600 municipalities in 17 cantons participate in the "Bring Plastic Back" system.

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This means that 2.4 million people have access to the collection of household plastics, said the collection and recycling organisation Innoway on Thursday.

The 15% increase on the previous year came about because more municipalities and cities joined the collection system.

The collection bags are sold by 1,387 stores, and there are 674 collection points for the filled bags. According to the figures, the 9,090 tonnes of plastic collected in 2024 replaced 4,545 tonnes of new material, which corresponds to around 14 million litres of oil.

+ Why don’t the Swiss recycle more plastic?

The recycled regranulate can be used to produce 3,550 kilometres of cable conduit, for example. Innoway sends the non-recyclable mixed plastics to the cement industry, which uses them as fuel. There they replace lignite or hard coal, which in turn reduces CO2 emissions.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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