LAWR

RWM WITH CIWM 2014 PREVIEW It's time we focus on quality as well as quantity 24 Local Authority Waste & Recycling September 2014 he UK recycling indus- try has seen great pro- gress over the last few years, with the amount of general waste recy- cled today over 400% higher than it was at the beginning of the century. However, the fact that we are now successfully collecting more is only half of the story. The challenge is to make sure that we actually make the most of our waste, or what I would rather call resource. It's just as much about quality as quantity. One of the major challenges facing the plastics recycling industry today is the surge in mixed plastic collections, often referred to as pots, tubs and trays (PTT). As we have seen the amount of waste collected increase, the qual- ity of the waste stream has steadily decreased. This is crystal clear in ECO Plastics' own experience; in 2008 an average incoming bale of plastic con- tained 95% plastic bottles, by 2013 it had dropped to 65%. Moreover, this type of mixed plas- tics material tends to contain a higher proportion of products which can't be recycled at all and only contaminate the waste stream, like film, black plastics and PET food trays. Whilst it is encouraging that consumers are embracing recycling, what we must remember is that most PTT material is, at this moment in time, not capable of being recycled domestically, and either ends up in landfill or incinera- tion. New tool This is why the Resource Association's ground-breaking Recycling Quality Information Point (ReQIP) is a wel- come tool for our information-starved industry. The hub spells out clear- ly what UK reprocessing industries need and can tolerate in terms of con- tamination to their primary feedstock requirements, and allows the reader to make judgements based on their desire to maximise value from the recyclate collected. Crucially, it provides other areas of the supply chain, be it local authorities, MRFs or waste management compa- nies, with a central source of informa- tion from the reprocessors themselves. This tool will prove vital to dispelling some of the confusion around specific materials and help inform stakeholders when implementing changes to their collection and sorting systems. It's important to bear in mind that whilst initiatives like this will sim- plify navigation across our complex recycling industry, there's another even simpler solution to increasing the quality of our plastic waste stream and that's to collect more bottles. We're still losing over 300,000 tonnes of bottles to landfill which we need to prevent. High value Plastic bottles are the highest value plastic resource and the one in most demand. Supplying the market with more plastic bottles will enable repro- cessors like us to generate the returns necessary to create new infrastructure, capable of processing other post-con- sumer plastic resource like PTT. Finally, it's all about consumers. Taking care of this fragile relationship should remain a priority, especially when householders are being bombard- ed with misinformation and confusing recycling instructions. Recent developments in super- market plastic bag regulations pro- vide a perfect opportunity for the Government to channel the VAT ele- ment of this charge towards a public education project. Recoup's 'Plastics Please' campaign, due to launch later this year, is a prime example of the type of campaign needed to increase consumer awareness when it comes to the collection of the correct type of plastic packaging. As China's appetite for our resource continues to diminish the necessi- ty of improving the quality of our waste stream and investing in our own recycling network becomes more real. What is clear is that the UK is cur- rently at a crucial juncture. Get it right and we will have a fully self-sufficient industry, where materi- als used in the UK are all collected, sorted, recycled and reformulated here, before returning to domestic markets contributing to a vibrant circular econ- omy. Miss the boat and we will be left with a mass of material that we can neither recycle nor export, which will end up in already overflowing landfills. Jonathan Short is the founder and deputy chairman of ECO Plastics. He will be speaking at the Local Authority Theatre on 16 September at RWM 2014. As China continues to implement higher standards on imports of recycled material via 'Operation Green Fence' the necessity to improve the quality of the UK's waste stream is becoming more real, argues Jonathan Short. Here, he explores the issue in more detail. T " We're still losing over 300,000 tonnes of bottles to landfill which we need to prevent. "

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