Recycling: Sorting the plastics problem

Simeon Goldstein, Packaging News, 03 September 2009

 

With around 450 local authorities in the UK collecting a tricky mix of polymers, it's no secret there's work to be done in plastics recycling. Simeon Goldstein looks at the sector's progress

 

 

The problem with getting consumers to recycle plastic is there's no such thing as plastic. Or rather plastic is more than one thing. The large range of materials to suit individual requirements is, of course, one of the great strengths of polymers, as is the fact they can be sandwiched together for even more applications, but it's a difficult message to convey to the consumer who has to separate them for the recycling bin.

 

More than a million tonnes of non-bottle plastic packaging enters the UK waste stream each year. Wrap has been at the forefront of developing plastics recycling in the UK and understands ‘mixed plastics' as all non-bottle plastics packaging in the domestic waste stream. "We recognise the term ‘mixed plastics' means different things to different people in the recycling and packaging industries, so we needed a consistent definition for our research," says Paul Davidson, the Waste and Resources Action Programme's (Wrap) plastics advisor. In part thanks to Wrap's efforts, 80 local authorities, of the more than 450 in the UK, now collect yoghurt pots, ice-cream tubs and films of a range of colours and polymer types.