The new Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 103 was developed by the British Plastics Federation, the British Standards Institute and the Waste and Resources Action Programme.
At the launch event in London Mark Burstall, chairman of the BPF's recycling council, explained: “This is a classification and grading system for the quality of collected plastics packaging.”
He explained that PAS 103 should be used by plastics collectors or traders to describe their loads of plastic, with things such as type of packaging, polymer, colour and level of contamination, and for waste plastics processors to specify the level of quality they are looking for.
The aims of the project are to expand the waste plastics market increase the value of the material and simplify the trading system. “If this thing is going to be any use at all,” said Mr Burstall, “buyers and sellers have got to starting using it.”
Colin Williamson, vice chairman of BPF's recycling council, claimed: “This is a world first for the plastics recycling industry. Metals, glass, paper and other collected waste materials have used classification systems for years, but this is the first complete system created specifically for plastics waste.”
The BPF is also working on a full accreditation standard with BSI and WRAP for waste plastics. WRAP has also been working with BSI to produce PAS standards for other material streams including compost, glass and wood and will shortly be starting work on a specification system for waste paper.
The plastics PAS 103 project was sponsored by the DTI, Biffaward, WRAP, European Metals Recycling and Fujitsu Services.
Published by BSI, PAS is available free of charge from WRAP. There is a summary on WRAP's website and also an automated online version of the specification form to be used for each load.
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