Plastic Bottle Recycling Rate Hits 48 Percent

31 October 2011

The latest report produced by Recoup and sponsored by Nampak Plastics and Wellman Recycling has been launched, showing an increase in the bottle-recycling rate, with 48.5 percent of UK plastic bottles now being collected for recycling

The data shows a 2.5 percent increase in comparison with the previous report, with over 281,000 tonnes of plastic bottles collected for recycling in 2010.

Non-bottle plastics collected for recycling from kerbside schemes has more than doubled to 76,300 tonnes.

With 21.7m UK households now receiving a plastic bottle kerbside collection, bottle collection rates have jumped from 3 percent to 48.5 percent and the number of bring collection points has more than trebled, and non-bottle plastic collections have evolved from effectively nothing to 76,300 tonnes.

Stuart Foster, Deputy CEO at Recoup said: "It is really exciting to be able to follow plastic packaging collection scheme progress over the years. The report would not be possible without the responses received from individual local authorities, so thank you to all who participated."

However, the data should ring some alarm bells for policy makers as well as those organisations across the plastic supply, collection and recycling chain. The Recoup survey data suggests that bottle collection rates over the next five years will struggle to meet the burgeoning demand for material, while the non bottle collection rates will increase significantly, requiring urgent investment in sorting infrastructure, and further development of sustainable and auditable end markets for this fraction.

The full report due for release in early November and will be available at www.recoup.org

Look out for January's CIWM Journal for a full feature on the report

Darrel Moore