The issue of poor quality plastics being collected by councils hit the headlines this week.
Lincolnshire-based plastic bottle recycler Eco Plastics has said that the deteriorating quality of plastic collected for recycling in the UK is costing local authorities £10m each year, owing to a reduction in the sale value of the material.
Some critics argue that councils are opting for a quantity over quality recycling strategy to avoid exceeding their landfill quota, risking material such as plastics that is in no state to be reused commercially ending up back in landfill.
For this month’s poll, Packaging News is asking what measure(s) would most improve the quality of UK plastics recyclate?
To take part, simply cast your vote in the ‘Poll’ section on the right-hand side of the website.
We also want to hear your views on the issue. What can the packaging industry and its clients do, if anything, to improve the quality of UK plastics recyclate? Do retailers and manufacturers need to improve packaging materials to ensure more is widely recyclable at high value? Or is the shoe on the other foot with the councils?
Have your say by leaving a comment below.
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The poor quality of the plastics being collected for recycling has nothing to do with either packaging Companies or their clients but has everything to do with succesive Governments’ fixation with targets. Reliance on landfill tax alone to drive the nations recycling efforts has lead inexorably to the current quantity rather than quality collection mindset which suits our waste management sector just fine. All current targets are measured by quantity i.e. volume rather than by quality i.e. value and so long as the Far Eastern export markets are there to accept our dirty mixed waste packaging, thereby ticking the quantity box for government, then nothing will change and UK plastic recyclers such as Ecoplasics will suffer through lack of acceptable raw material to feed their plants.
By way of example as to how the low cost expedient of trading waste as a global commodity has been encouraged by succesive governments, consider the following fact.Despite intensive lobbying by major reprocessors from all material sectors, plastics, paper, metals and glass, DEFRA has defiantly insisted upon interpreting the Revised European Waste Framework’s Directive for all member states to collect the above materials separately, to include mixing them all together in commingled collections.
Once all materials are completely commigled at the collection stage, it is nigh on imposible for MRFs to produce materials of sufficient quality for the UKs recyclers and even if they could, why should they as this just slows them down, adds cost and anyway they can just export the material without going to the bother of separating material correctly. Oh, and they tick the Government’s target box to boot!