Plastic waste monitoring and recycling by hyperspectral imaging technology

Environmentally sound management of plastic waste is a fundamental achievement in order to move towards circular economy and sustainable patterns of consumption and production. In this work, different emerging applications for plastic waste monitoring and recycling based on hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology, coupled with chemometric logics, are presented and discussed. Marine microplastics, one of the main environmental concerns, can be recognized and characterized by HSI, providing at the same time information related to the particle morphological and morphometrical attributes. Furthermore, some critical issues in plastic recycling can be solved by HSI, as separation of polyolefins, identification of black polymers and recognition of biopolymers in conventional plastic recycled streams.