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Sustainability must underpin proposed government recycling targets

POSTED | 04 03 2010

New Government targets to boost plastic packaging recycling rates need to be “realistic and achievable” and improvements based on sound science and full life cycle thinking, the Plastics 2020 Challenge said today.

The Plastics 2020 Challenge made their comments in response to a government consultation paper setting out packaging recycling targets including a new target for plastic packaging recycling of 56.9% in 2020.  The plastics industry has concerns about committing so early to such a high target for 2020 when there are real doubts at the moment about achievability from an environmental and sustainability perspective.

The Plastics 2020 Challenge was established in 2009 with the mission to divert plastics from landfill by exploring all 4 “Rs” of the waste hierarchy. For recycling the commitment is to work in partnership with the whole value chain and all levels of government to double the plastics packaging recycling rate to 50% by 2020.  This target followed careful analysis of what could be achieved and is itself a very ambitious target requiring a considerable step change in performance.

Jan-Erik Johansson from the Plastics 2020 Challenge said:  “Targets on plastics packaging recycling should be ambitious but also realistic and achievable.  Although the Plastics 2020 Challenge welcomes the Government’s commitment to increased performance, it’s essential that industry and Government work in partnership and recognise the trends and learning on recycling from across Europe and worldwide before setting a target well beyond what any other country achieve today.  The plastics industry hopes that the government will use the consultation period on the latest proposed recycling targets to listen to the views of the industry on the practical steps needed to achieve a sustainable and workable recycling target for plastics packaging.  If we get this wrong it risks undermining all the great collaborative work that has been done in recent years to drive up the rates of recycling in this country ”

The industry has identified four particular issues which already make the industry’s 50% target challenging and suggest the government’s proposed 57% target may well be unachievable:

·        Local government independence.  The government has confirmed that local government will retain the independence of decision making to choose its own approach to recycling collection and disposal.  This makes it much harder to secure universal roll-out of a successful model for driving up recycling rates.  The industry wants e.g. to see all of local government collecting plastic bottles.  This is still not happening because of the local flexibility to decide what to collect.

·        The public sector financial situation.  There is a challenging financial situation which will make it very difficult to maintain existing and secure new collection and reprocessing infrastructure.  The credit crunch threatens to undermine investment in kerbside collections and sorting and reprocessing infrastructure in the UK.  Last week East Cambridgeshire became the first local authority in England to axe kerbside plastics collections.  Bigger PFI projects may also suffer.

·        Infrastructure and technology gaps.  The industry supports the recycling of food trays once sorting and reprocessing technologies can be mastered.  There is little point in collecting such items when there are currently few reprocessing opportunities.  The rate of recycling can only increase in line with collection, sorting and reprocessing capacity.

·        Sustainability challenges.  While the industry backs recycling for the right materials when the infrastructure is in place, not all plastics are suitable for recycling because of the resources needed to collect, sort, clean and convert.  Examples would be the plastic film used to seal food trays.  Contamination in local authority recycling is already a major problem and extending kerbside collection is likely to further reduce the quality of the collected product, compromising current materials with additional cross-contamination from food waste and liquids.

The target set by the industry exceeds the best performance across Europe and would take the UK to a leading position in Europe in 2020.  No country in Europe has declared plans to aim for a target as high as that proposed by the UK plastics industry for 2020.  For example, Germany has the best plastics recycling rate across Europe but it has been stable around 45% for the past 15 years. 

In compiling its targets for the different forms of plastic packaging (bottles, trays, films) the UK industry looked at the top performing countries in Europe and chose as our target the best level achieved in each packaging segment.  No one country leads in all segment of plastics packaging which would mean that if the industry’s target for 2020 was achieved the UK would outclass all other EU nations across the board and achieve a combined plastics packaging recycling rate seen nowhere else in the world.

In order to double the plastic packaging recycling rate in just ten years the Plastics 2020 Challenge will focus on the following plastics packaging streams:

(1) press for the complete roll out of plastic bottle collections from the kerbside and to expand the collection of plastic bottles from the commercial sector.

(2) facilitate and promote additional collection, sorting and reprocessing of rigid mixed plastic pots and trays.

(3) enhance the reprocessing of packaging film used in commercial settings which can be efficiently and effectively recycled because of the volume of material presented for reprocessing and its constituency and cleanliness (free from food waste).

See also http://packagingnews.co.uk/channel/materials/news/988290/Plastic-packaging-bodies-slam-unachievable-recycling-targets/

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