Abstract: 

Plastics have been increasingly used in a wide range of applications, generating important waste streams, but overall information on their flows through society is generally not available. Therefore, the national plastic flows in Austria were analyzed and quantified from the production stage up to the waste management stage. To achieve this, material flow analysis was used to set up a model quantitatively describing the Austrian plastics budget. In addition to the overall plastics flow, special focus was given to the packaging plastics, which amount to about 300 kt/yr.
The results of the analysis reveal that the vast majority of plastics is thermal utilized and only about 20% are currently recycled. For packaging plastics the recycling rate is higher, but still far below the new recycling targets of the European Union (50 and 55%, respectively).