• The total quantity of plastic bottles entering the UK household wastestream is approximately 525,000 tonnes per annum, which equates to an estimated 13 billion plastic bottles
• 2,700 million plastic bottles were recycled in 2006 (108,000 tonnes). This saved approximately 135,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (based on a mix of 50% PET and 50% HDPE)
• 20% (or 1 in 5) of household plastic bottles were recycled in 2006. The latest annualised figures show that 25% are recycled, with an estimated 9.8 billion plastic bottles still being sent to landfill
• The average value of sorted baled bottles in 2007 was £155 per tonne for PET and £200 per tonne for HDPE
• Around 11% of household waste is plastic, 40% of which is plastic bottles High performing kerbside collection schemes typically generate between 10-15kg plastic bottles per household per year, with some schemes indicating they generate over 20kg/hh/year.
Source: Recoup

• UK plastic recycling is evolving fast, having grown from nothing over 10-15 years
• Historically there have been few UK based plastic reprocessors. These reprocessors recycle plastic into other products (e.g. traffic bollards and street furniture) in the ‘open-loop’ system
• The main historical growth in demand for recycled plastic bottles has been from the export market
• Demand for recycled HDPE and PET significantly exceeds supply.

Source: Recoup

The challenges ahead
• Maintaining quality as a larger proportion of the material is recovered from post-consumer, rather than post-industrial, sources
• The continuing trend towards – and demand from households for − mixed plastics collections is a big challenge but also represents a major opportunity to increase UK plastics recycling rates. Particular challenges include: the proliferation of polymer types (including bio-polymers); the high degree of contamination; and the current lack of robust end markets for these materials
• Domestic plastics reprocessing capacity seems to have declined in recent years, perhaps because of increasing global competition. Events in international markets in 2007 have underlined the potential risks in being dependent on one market for the UK’s recovered material. Widening the markets for UK recovered plastics, for example through applications such as closed-loop bottle recycling, could help mitigate these risks
• Finally, the volatility in recovered − and virgin − plastic prices presents a challenge to market participants.
Source: WRAP

Opportunities
• Closed Loop, M&S, Coca-Cola and others have recently launched initiatives to collect packaging waste resulting from ‘away from home’ food and drink consumption.

The environmental benefits of plastics recycling
There are clear environmental benefits to producing plastic products from recovered polymers, compared with using virgin polymers and disposing of the product post-use via incineration or landfill
• The main environmental benefit lies in the energy saved by avoiding the processes of oil refining and polymerisation of monomers. These are estimated to account for over 95 per cent of the total energy consumed in plastics production
• The average net CO2 saving from recycling is estimated to be 1-1.5 tonnes CO2 equivalent per tonne of plastics
• The environmental gains from recycling plastic compared with landfill and incineration are, however, heavily dependent on the level of contamination of the recovered plastics. In particular, hot washing of plastics to remove contamination can be energy intensive, although some lifecycle assessment analyses suggest that net CO2 benefits remain
• It is estimated that the 456,000 tonnes of plastics recovered in the UK in 2006 saved around 684,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions, which equates to taking 216,000 cars off the road.
Source: WRAP

Find out how Closed Loop Recycling can help, contact info@closedlooprecycling.co.uk