The Plastics 2020 consortium and the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) have launched the Plastics Industry Recycling Action Plan (PIRAP) today (16 June) at the Plastics Recycling Expo in Telford.

PIRAP, first announced in September 2014, aims to provide a ‘cooperative strategy’ for the plastic packaging supply chain to contribute towards achieving the UK government’s target for obligated users – of 57 per cent of plastic packaging recycling by 2017. The plan intends to help develop ‘a resilient and sustainable plastics recycling sector in the UK’.

According to the plan, improvements could be made to:

• develop end markets for plastics recyclate;
• enhance collection rates;
• adopt best-in-class collection methods;
• optimise sorting infrastructure; and
• improve design.

Plan details

PIRAP estimates that the UK needs to increase its plastics capture rate by 350,000 tonnes to achieve 57 per cent recycling by 2017. The report outlines steps that need to be taken by various players in the plastics recycling supply chain to achieve this, including:

• Central government must ‘work to ensure that [the regulatory environment] is correctly adjusted to meet the requirements of the PIRAP’.
• Local authorities ‘will require funding… to revitalise and extend existing collections’, which will need to be supported through ‘enhanced communication with householders’.
• The waste management sector ‘must… recognise its important role, highlighted by the new MRF Regulations and the accompanying sampling guidance, for delivery of a rapidly improving quality of sorted plastic raw materials to the plastics reprocessing sector’.
• The plastic reprocessing sector ‘will need to increase capacity by approximately 100 kilotonnes per annum over the next three years through a combination of investment in capacity, process innovation and the development of new high-quality markets for recycled plastics’.
• Compliance schemes must ‘work to ensure that all reprocessors of plastics packaging are registered to issue PRN/PERN evidence notes in order that no significant tonnage of plastics packaging recycling goes unrecorded’.
• Obligated businesses – including retailers, brand owners, packaging converters and fillers ‘should wherever practical seek to increase the use of recycled plastics in the packaging products they produce and refocus their packaging design criteria upon both ability to incorporate higher volumes of recycled plastics and ease of recycling at end of life’.

An agreed document ‘in an area that has become political football’

Philip Law, Director General of Plastics 2020 member the British Plastics Federation, said: “Recycling is the absolutely essential component of the ‘sustainability story’. It’s a great achievement to secure an agreed document in an area which has become a political football. Plastics packaging recycling levels are a function of so many factors and the support of a very large number of organisations has to be harnessed to make significant progress.”

Kim Christiansen, Regional Director North PlasticsEurope, added: “The proposed UK 2017 plastics recycling targets represent a great challenge to industry in taking it from a mid-performing to one of the top performing member states in Europe. To help rise to this challenge, PlasticsEurope and its 2020C partners welcome the support of WRAP and Defra in helping us work with the value chain in order to drive the UK towards this goal.”

‘A wide range of supporters already signed up’

PIRAP was initiated by WRAP through consultation with all stakeholders, including national and local government, the waste management industry, obligated users, producers, converters and recyclers. Plastics 2020 then adopted the task of engaging with the different stakeholders to agree on different actions for commitment. To date, 21 organisations involved in the plastics recycling supply chain have signed up to the plan.

Claire Shrewsbury, Packaging Programme Manager at WRAP, said: “It’s fantastic to see the Plastics Recycling Industry Action Plan launch with a wide range of supporters already signed up. To realise the full benefits of plastics recycling, and achieve the targets, the whole supply chain must work together to achieve a common outcome. The plan will drive this kind of collaboration and strengthen links across the entire plastics supply chain, ensuring more valuable plastic is recycled into second life applications.”

Plastics 2020 will be engaging directly with the main trade bodies representing stakeholders, and other relevant stakeholders, to establish joint actions that can be taken ‘to ensure the year-on-year growth in recycled plastics’. The plan covers all aspects of the packaging’s end of life cycle including collection, household participation, sorting, reprocessing, and support for innovation.

Read the full  ‘Plastics Industry Recycling Action Plan’.