Plastic Film Recycling Trials Show Positive Move Forward

24 November 2011

Councils could see plastic film recycling collections become a reality within four years according to the success of trials

Funded by WRAP, the research shows that it is technically possible to manufacture commercially useful products for the retail sector from mixed post-consumer film packaging.

Axion Consulting worked with manufacturers; CeDo, Centriforce Products and Protomax Plastics on trials of post-consumer films sourced from a retailer's front and back of store collections and were used to produce refuse sacks, external hoardings, shelving and in-store displays.

The findings should give manufacturers confidence to invest in production capability, according to Axion's director Roger Morton, which would stimulate local authorities to accept waste plastic films in their recycling collections, which could happen within two to four years.

"This is a tremendous step in the right direction to really grow film recycling capacity in the UK over the next few years," Morton said. "Consumers want to see their plastic waste given a new second life... ultimately consumer demand will drive this whole closed-loop recycling process."

The manufacturing trial at CeDo involved two pre-processing stages; a film separation trial with Biffa at its MRF at Trafford Park and a cleaning and extrusion trial with Ecoplast in Austria. Sample refuse sacks from each trial run demonstrated that the material met the normal final production specification set by CeDo, with the exception of the tensile strength test for the 13.5 percent (single layer refuse sack) post-consumer recyclate Biffa material.

The manufacturing trial at Centriforce used material sourced from Sainsbury's. Comingled film sourced from Biffa's normal operations ('Class C' film) from its Trafford Park MRF was also sourced but was not processed due to high levels of impurity within the feed material making it unsuitable for Centriforce.

High melting point contaminants in the feedstock materials passing the screen led to an incidence of surface irregularities that was higher than normal. However, Centriforce technical staff judged the panels to be of sufficient quality for its typical hoarding applications.

The trials at Protomax utilised a prototype P2 machine to demonstrate the feasibility of manufacturing panel boards from comingled film waste. The trial used material sourced from Sainsbury's as well as comingled kerbside collected film sourced from Biffa's Trafford Park MRF. For the Protomax trials, the film material from Biffa and Sainsbury's was combined with rigid post-consumer plastic packaging sourced from Viridor.

Discussions have taken place with Sainsbury's and the Co-operative to determine ways to implement these products into their stores. Sainsbury's was particularly interested in the Protomax panels, for external hoardings and a range of other opportunities. Discussions focused on applications such as shelving, point of sale displays, trolley bays, petrol station kiosks and toilet cubicles.

The report's conclusion stated the financial viability of each of the potential product needs to be explored further and will need to show an economic or environmental benefit over existing product solutions in order for the retail sector to adopt them.

For the full report CLICK HERE

Darrel Moore