Why the Circular Economy Can't Scale Without Better Waste Sorting

Is the Circular Economy Actually Losing Ground?

Global circularity fell 21% between 2018 and 2023, and secondary resources now make up just 7.2% of global consumption. (Source) At the same time, municipal solid waste generation is projected to grow to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050, with the annual cost of managing it exceeding $640 billion. (Source) More waste is entering the system every year, and a shrinking share of it is coming back out as recovered material.

Where Does Unrecovered Material Actually End Up?

The scale of what gets missed is significant. An estimated $2.6 trillion worth of fast moving consumer goods material goes unrecovered every year. (Source) This is not primarily a collection problem. Most of this material passes through a facility at some point. The issue is that it is not correctly identified once it gets there.

Why Does Material Recovery Depend on Identification, Not Just Collection?

A facility can only recover what it can correctly identify on the line. Camera based sorting sees what is on the surface. Standard metal detectors flag that something metallic is present, but cannot tell a valuable alloy apart from ordinary scrap. When a system cannot classify what it sees, recoverable material gets treated the same as waste, and it ends up landfilled or incinerated instead of recovered.

This is the same underlying gap that lets hazardous objects like batteries pass through waste streams undetected. A sensor built to classify materials accurately does not just catch what is dangerous. It also identifies what is valuable.

Litech's sensor sits underneath the existing conveyor belt and reads the magnetic fingerprint of every object passing over it, using MIS technology developed in Norway. It distinguishes between metal types and alloys in real time, which means a facility using it is not only catching hazards earlier. It is also seeing more of the recoverable material already on its own line, material that a less precise system would have sent straight to landfill.

What Is the Economic Upside of Better Material Identification?

The economic case for closing this gap is large. Recyclables already save more than 700 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year, a number expected to reach 1 billion tonnes by 2030. (Source) A functioning circular economy could generate $1 trillion in revenue for Europe alone by 2050. (Source) A global circular economy could produce a net profit of $108.5 billion per year, with revenue outpacing the cost of managing the waste in the first place. (Source)

None of that is possible if facilities cannot tell what is actually moving through their own lines. Better identification is not a side benefit of fire prevention technology. It is the same capability, applied to a second problem: recovering more of what is already there.