The council is now telling residents they can no longer recycle carrier bags, food containers and bottle caps at six of Warwickshire's household waste recycling centres. Householders are still able to recycle their PET soft drinks bottles and HDPE milk and detergent bottles, however.
” There is not the market within England to take mixed plastics. We have spoken to a number of outlets and they have said that after the PET and HDPE are sorted the other materials go to landfill. “
– Roy burton, Warwickshire CC
The collapse of the popular service has come as a result of Warwickshire's desire to keep recyclable plastics within the UK, rather than exporting them abroad for recycling.
Warwickshire's contractor since the mixed plastics scheme started in December 2006 – HW Martin Ltd – informed the county council that the domestic market for mixed plastics had effectively dried up.
Cllr Martin Heatley, Warwickshire's cabinet member for environmental services, said: “Unfortunately the contractor has informed us that we can no longer accept the additional plastics collected and we are returning to recycling soft drinks bottles (PET, No1) and milk containers and detergent bottles (HDPE, No2) for the foreseeable future.”
However, Cllr Heatley advised residents to “watch this space”, hinting at a return to the collection of mixed plastics some time in the future.
Alternative options
Roy Burton, operations manager for waste management at Warwickshire council, explained to letsrecycle.com that the county was looking into alternative options for a possible re-starting of the mixed plastics service.
This may ultimately see Warwickshire exporting mixed plastics abroad for recycling.
Mr Burton explained: “There is not the market within England to take mixed plastics. We have spoken to a number of outlets and they have said that after the PET and HDPE are sorted the other materials go to landfill.
“We want to start taking the material in because residents were very interested in recycling plastic. But before we do we need to ensure that the plastic is going to a reputable market,” he added.
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While plastic bottles are usually made of HDPE or PET, plastic food packaging can contain a number of types of plastic, including LDPE and polypropylene, which are often more difficult to recycle.
While there are some councils that do collect mixed plastics for recycling, in many cases this involves the export of material to reprocessors abroad. Mixed plastics collected on the new service run by the London borough of Southwark (see letsrecycle.com story) are sorted by Slough-based Baylis Recycling with material sent to the Netherlands for reprocessing.
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