Our Blog discusses the current UK plastic bottle recycling rate and poses questions regarding the viability of recycling plastic pots, tubs and trays in order to achieve stretching plastic packaging recycling targets.
Whilst plastic bottle recycling rates have been growing, the weight of all the plastic bottles bought by consumers in the UK, such as soft drinks, has remained steady. This is most likely due to the light-weighting of plastic bottles counter balancing growth in sales of soft drinks and other plastic bottled products.
Whilst it is positive that we are potentially recycling more plastic bottles than we thought, a higher recycling rate implies there could be fewer ‘untapped’ plastic bottles remaining in the waste stream. This could make achieving the stretching plastic packaging recycling targets set by government even harder and highlights the importance of growing collections of other types of plastic packaging, such as PTTs (pots, tubs & trays) and the end markets for such materials.
Do you believe there are or could be sufficient end markets for PTTs in the UK or abroad? Should the UK double or triple the quantity of PTTs collected? With China showing little interest in the material and the UK having limited reprocessing or end uses for it, will we wind up with a spectacular plastic packaging mountain rather than recycling rate? If so, how can we prevent this from happening?
This research was undertaken by Valpak and WRAP to support the UK meeting the 2017 plastic packaging recycling targets and is published in three reports:
All three of these reports are now available from this website and are already being used by the plastics industry and government to support increased plastics recycling.