As a result of the reformed Waste Act more attention is being paid to the amount of waste placed in landfills. The new regulation on the organic waste landfill ban will come into effect at the beginning of 2016. Therefore, before placing the waste in the landfill it has to be pre-treated to utilize the organic matter.

The purpose of this Bachelor’s thesis was to find out the amounts of different product fractions of pre-treated construction and demolition waste generated during processing in the mixed waste sorting plant. In addition, the applicability of these product fractions in the production of energy or material recovery was examined. The thesis was commissioned by Kymenlaakson Jäte Oy, which has invested in a new mixed waste sorting plant in order to be prepared for the upcoming landfill ban and also to increase the material recovery. The new mixed waste sorting plant was built to be an extension of the old crushing plant and this thesis was carried out as a part of the new plant implementation process. The aim was to find out the shares of organic matter in the product fractions, contents of the harmful substances, and the technical features of combustion through a laboratory analysis. The main focus was on examining the incoming mixed construction waste.

It was found out that all the product fractions generated could be utilized fully, either as material or energy depending on the composition of the product. Products consisting of soil and rocks can be exploited in landfill structures while the products containing plastic and wood can be exploited as recycled fuel in power plants. The quality of the fuel is defined by the used combustion technology, which is why the evaluation of energy recovery has to be case specific.