Estimating The Actual Recycling Rate of Plastic Waste in Municipal Solid Waste: A Material Flow Analysis

In accordance with the implementation of the ‘Framework Act on Resource Circulation’ in 2018, local governments are required to establish a basic plan for resource circulation and calculate resource circulation indicators to establish a basic resource circulation plan. However, among the resource circulation indicators, the ‘circulation utilization rate’ refers to the ratio of the actual recycling capacity to the amount of waste generated. Therefore, the status of the residues generated in the recycling process of waste should be taken into account. However, the currently announced ‘national waste generation and treatment status’ does not include the data on the residues generated during the selection process, making it difficult to calculate the actual recycling rate. In this study, each result value was derived using a material flow chart divided into five stages and a two-stage recycling process to calculate an appropriate actual recycling rate. As a result, the actual recycling rate of plastic waste among domestic waste was calculated as 71.70, and the final disposal rate was 15.25. As a result, it is judged that realistic figures were calculated compared to the actual recycling rate (100%) and final disposal rate (0%) calculated based on the national waste generation and treatment status used in most local governments and municipalities.