Kerbside film collections ‘just a few years away’

Councils should be able to accept waste plastic films within their recycling collections within two to four years, according to consultancy Axion Recycling.

Theforecast from the consultancy comes after it carried out research into the use of post-consumer plastic films in manufacturing new products, which was published last month by WRAP (see letsrecycle.com story).

Working alongside plastics manufacturers CeDo, Centriforce Products and Protomax Plastics, Axion carried out the research using films taken from supermarket collection points. The films were then used to produce products such as refuse sacks, external hoardings, shelving and in-store displays.

Now, Axion claims that the potential shown by the study to produce commercially useful products from film should give manufacturers an incentive to invest in further research.

Roger Morton, director at Axion, predicts that the prospect of closed loop recycling of plastic films could become a full-scale commercial reality within the next four years and could in turn lead councils to accept waste them in their collections.

He said: This is a tremendous step in the right direction to really grow film recycling capacity in the UK over the next few years. Consumers want to see their plastic waste given a new second life as theyre now far more conscious of what theyre throwing away. Ultimately consumer demand will drive this whole closed-loop recycling process.

Infrastructure

However, a spokeswoman for Axion told letsrecycle.com that while the findings were a further step towards an increase in recycling capacity, it was unlikely that household collections would include plastic film straight away unless recycling technology can adapt to the change.

She said: If they started taking plastic films tomorrow, the system would not cope. At the moment it is much easier to process if you keep the film plastics separately, the existing structure is not set up to handle a lot of plastic films, so it would be necessary to have separate streams until the technology develops to allow commingled streams.

David Brookes, technical development director at CeDo, echoed the view that widespread plastic film recycling could become a reality, if technical advances continue.

He said: The WRAP study run by Axion demonstrates technically that this is possible. Of critical importance is to develop upon this technical foundation to deliver economic solutions. CeDo are firmly behind these initiatives and will continue to develop the technology to provide an economic closed loop model for our key customers in the UK and the wider EU.