Let's talk about good practices in waste management - conference during POLECO 2023

The events are invited by the organizers: the MTP Group, TOMRA and TOMRA Talks, the Waste Management and Recycling Cluster - National Key Cluster and the PlasticsEurope Foundation. The conference will be held on the grounds of the Poznan International Fair on October 17-19, 2023. Admission is free for fair visitors.

Holistic resource management in Poland

The co-organizers of the conference - TOMRA and TOMRA Talks - invite you to a track entitled "Holistic Resource Management in Poland." This will be an opportunity to analyze the Polish holistic model and try to answer the question of what to do to achieve a 65 percent recycling rate for municipal waste.

As a global leader in working toward circular resource management, TOMRA is continuously analyzing and optimizing methods to achieve the highest possible recycling rates and greenhouse gas emission reductions. The frameworks in question include: separate collection of specific fractions of municipal waste, bailing systems, and sorting of municipal mixed waste. 

As part of the thematic track, there will be a number of discussions on the holistic resource management model for Poland, which will allow the theory of the holistic model to be translated into the conditions and infrastructure that exist in a specific country. As a result, the organizers will seek to answer the question of how Poland - as a country - can achieve a 65 percent recycling rate for municipal waste, while reducing harmful emissions associated with waste management.

In this part of the conference, the topic will be supported by actual data from Polish municipal installations. At the same time, participants will want to focus on the practice, improvement and modernization of existing infrastructure in order to achieve increasing efficiency in the management of raw materials.

The broad program of the track organized by TOMRA and TOMRA Talks includes such topics as:

• Holistic Resource Management System for Poland;
• circularity of plastics;
• sorting-before incineration or landfilling;
• servicing and digital solutions - savings from better use of technology;
• recycling of plastics;
• textiles: how to collect, what to do, how to manage the new stream?

Potential of the recycling sector - barriers and directions of development

During the panel discussions of the Cluster of Waste Management and Recycling (KGOiR), experts will talk about the barriers and directions of development of a closed-loop economy, including recycling in the areas of plastic waste, e-waste, waste tires and batteries, among others. We will talk about the development paths of companies in the area of recycling as well as recovery, resulting in new innovative as well as circular products.

There will be no shortage of topics in the field of energy recovery from waste in the context of the use of biogas plants, which are one of the alternatives to energy in Poland. For the development of the economy, specific activities related to waste management are necessary, so the panels will not lack proven solutions and good examples.

The part of the conference organized by KGOiR will address issues such as:

• recycling in GOZ: electro-waste, used tires;
• energy recovery from waste - biogas plants: agricultural and municipal;
• BAT conclusions;
• battery recycling;
• Non-ferrous metals and critical raw materials;
• circular products;
• circular transformation.

More than 130 entities (SMEs, large companies, science and the business environment) are part of the Waste Management and Recycling Cluster, a National Key Cluster creating a raw material base for the industry, integrating the industry and strengthening the competitiveness of member companies in accordance with the Closed Circuit Economy model.

The cluster creates a unique platform for supporting entities within cluster value chains in increasing their competitiveness, implementing product innovation, developing sustainable technologies and strengthening human capital. By animating activities, it creates environments for cooperation and financing of innovation for the benefit of both its members and the circular economy as a whole.

Plastics recycling - present and future

This is part of a conference sponsored by the PlasticsEurope Poland Foundation, which represents the European and Polish plastics industry. As part of its statutory activities, the Foundation conducts numerous projects on plastics waste and its management, working with local and European experts in the field. Regularly published reports, containing figures documenting progress in plastics waste management in Poland and Europe, are a constant element of this work. You can get acquainted with them ON THIS WEBSITE.

A significant challenge in Poland, from the point of view of the possibility of achieving the recycling targets set in the GOZ, remains the insufficient availability of good quality raw material for recycling, resulting from, among other things, inefficient collection of raw material from households. In this context, an important element in the discussion of plastics waste management in Poland and the basis for making decisions on the direction and size of investments in this area is a good system of data collection and its full multidirectional analysis.

According to the industry, a discussion on this topic is necessary, conducted among a wide range of experts representing all stakeholders, and among the specific issues should be ways to improve waste reporting, including stricter rules for assigning waste codes in all waste collection, collection and processing operations at waste treatment facilities. An important part of this discussion also remains the issue of providing raw material for recycling, which, according to GOZ, is the priority way to manage plastic waste, always taking precedence over energy recovery from waste and landfilling.

The organizers of the conference are: