Polish waste management systems currently are under development and modernization in order to adjust to European Union standards. Mechanical biological waste treatment systems installed in so-called regional municipal solid waste treatment plants are being developed. This type of plant needs to be operated in order to obtain required levels of recycling and waste recovery and to limit the amount of biodegradable waste directed to landfills. A key element of all these type of devices are sorting plants. This paper presents the results of sorting tests of unsorted municipal solid waste from Koblenz city. Tests were performed in the Research and Test Facility located at TITECH GmbH in Mülheim-Kärlich in Germany. The tests made it possible to determine efficiency of the process of automatic separation of plastics and papers using a Titech autosort separator equipped with near infra-red sensor (NIR 1). Test results show differences in the morphological composition of unsorted municipal solid waste from Poland and Germany, and their potential in respect to content of recovered materials.