WRAP Event Focuses on Next Big Recycling Challenge

Increasing demand for plastic recycling means industry is faced with the technical and economic challenge of how to collect and process plastic packaging such as films, pots, tubs and trays. This was the subject discussed at ‘Extending Recycling – Is the UK Ready for Mixed Plastics?’, an event hosted by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) today 30 October 2007.

Mixed plastics are the most commonly encountered packaging materials in the UK. At least one million tonnes of household mixed plastics end up in landfill every year

The event, which included retailers, local authorities, brand owners, packaging suppliers, plastics producers and associations, aimed to highlight the challenges and opportunities for collecting, sorting and recycling or recovering of mixed plastics.

WRAP is undertaking trials with a number of technologies with the aim of understanding the best ways to handle mixed plastics from an environmental, economical and technological perspective. WRAP is doing this by investigating three areas: collection, reprocessing, and end markets.

WRAP chief executive Liz Goodwin said: “Reprocessing mixed plastics in the UK has massive potential. Currently only around 20,000 tonnes are collected from households every year, much of which is exported.

“New sorting and recycling technology, along with an increased desire to recycle these materials, means that now is the time to investigate other options and alternative methods of collections.”

For mixed plastics collection WRAP’s ROTATE team, which provides advice on recycling to local authorities, is researching and testing different ways of collecting the materials to find the method that best suits the whole supply chain.

Once collected, handling mixed plastics is an area around which there is currently no clear agreement. WRAP is currently testing a wide variety of technologies for separating out different plastic materials.

After materials have been separated, WRAP is working to discover which end market is best for mixed plastics environmentally and economically. It will also consider recycling and recovery options, such as reprocessing mixed plastics into new plastics, incinerating them, chemically treating them – or even turning them into diesel.

WRAP’s focus on mixed plastics follows on from the successful uptake of plastic bottle recycling. Plastic bottle recycling has significantly increased in recent years, with around 132,000 tonnes of plastic bottles collected and recycled from UK households in 2006.