Environmental protection is one of the main challenges facing society nowadays. Even with constantly growing awareness, not all of the sorting can be done by people themselves - the differences between materials are not visible to the human eye. For that reason, we present the use of a hyperspectral camera as a capture device, which allows us to obtain the full spectrum of the material. In this work we propose a method for efficient recognition of the substance of an item. We conducted several experiments and analysis of the spectra of different materials in different conditions on a special measuring stand. That enabled identification of the best features, which can later be used during classification, which was confirmed during the extensive testing procedure.