Material Recovery Yield Calculator

Work out material recovery yield instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Material Recovery Yield Calculator

Sorting performance has two independent dimensions: capture rate, the fraction of target material recovered, and purity, the fraction of the output that is actually the target. Pushing capture higher usually lowers purity, and the optimum depends on which the reprocessor penalises more heavily.

Formulas

Capture

Captured = input x target fraction x capture rate

Product mass

Product = captured / purity; contamination = product - captured

Worked example

With the default values below, Material Recovery Yield Calculator returns Product Tonnage Produced of 203.789. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Input To Sorting Facilityminimum 0 tonnes: 1,000 tonnes
Target Material In Feedaccepts 0–100 %: 22 %
Sorting Capture Rateaccepts 0–100 %: 88 %
Output Product Purityaccepts 0–100 %: 95 %

Results

Product Tonnage Produced: 203.789
Target Material Captured: 193.600
Material Lost To Residue: 26.400
Contamination In Product: 10.1895

Step by step

1Values used
2Capture
3Product mass
4Product Tonnage Produced= 203.789
5Target Material Captured= 193.600
6Material Lost To Residue= 26.400
7Contamination In Product= 10.1895

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 4 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the capture-purity trade-off unavoidable?

Sorting equipment separates on a physical property with overlapping distributions. Setting a threshold to catch more target material inevitably admits more near-miss contaminants.

What purity do reprocessors demand?

Typically 95-98% for paper grades and PET bottles, with strict limits on specific contaminants. Loads outside specification are rejected or heavily discounted, so purity often matters more than capture.