The comment came from Duncan Grierson, founder of Plasrecycle, who told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that only 20% of local authorities are currently asking people to recycle films and bags. Mr Grierson was speaking with carrier bags featuring in media coverage across England with the implementation today (October 5) of the 5p per bag carrier bag charging scheme.
Council
While Mr Grierson is seeking more local authority sourced film and bags, one council said today that it was discouraging residents from putting bags in to their recycling collections and instead advised them to use carrier bag recycling points at stores.
The local authority – Reigate & Banstead in Surrey – is typical of a number of councils who are trying to reduce the amount of plastic carrier bags in the municipal recycling stream because of concerns that they can cause problems at materials recycling facilities.
The council has found, for example, that the public are putting carrier bags of bottles and cans into the grey recycling containers issued by the borough. The collection contract is run in-house with material bulked up by Suez at Earlswood, Surrey.
Mixed recycling
Frank Etheridge, streetscene manager at Reigate & Banstead, said: “From 9 November 2015 we will no longer accept plastic bags in mixed recycling containers. We want to encourage residents to re-use plastic bags as much as possible and save money – as from 5 October 2015 large shops will charge shoppers at least 5p for each single-use carrier bag they use.
“Ahead of 9 November we will be publicising this change and also suggesting other uses for plastic bags, rather than throwing them away empty. This will include stickers and bin hangers on bins, information on our website plus social media activity.”
Mr Etheridge added: “Plastic bags also slow the recycling process down, increase our recycling costs and reduce income from recycling, so the change will help us with this… Ideally, we would like residents to use re-useable carrier bags whenever possible but if you do have plastic bags to dispose of, most supermarkets accept them for recycling.”
Plasrecycle
Explaining more about Plasrecycle, Mr Grierson told Radio 4 that the company receives “bales of mixed plastic films and some contamination from local authorities and waste companies”, (see also letsrecycle.com story)
He said: “We put it through our high tech plant, which has taken five years to develop and build and we convert it all the way back into small plastic granules which can be used to make new products.”
Mr Grierson noted that currently only 20% of local authorities are “actively asking residents to recycle their plastic bags and other plastic films but actually polythene is totally recyclable. Bread bags, laundry bags, multipack plastic packaging… There is really no good reason why everyone shouldn’t put their plastic bags and films into the recycling system”.
The new products which can be produced from the granules, he said, include damp proof membranes and also black bin bags.
So the Councils want the public to put plastic bags into the carrier bag recycling bins at supermarkets.
Perhaps someone should tell the supermarkets this. The supermarkets continue to provide us with their products wrapped in an exasperating motley collection of bags.
Perhaps the public should vote with their feet in this case and just return all the plastic film from wrapped products in in these collection bins. There can’t possibly be a good enough reason other than obfuscation for such a mix.