Their comments come after Defra last week (March 4) launching a consultation on proposed changes to the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007 – which include new packaging recycling targets for businesses for the period 2011-20 (see letsrecycle.com story).
And, both plastics recycling campaign group, the Plastics2020 Challenge, and the plastics sector trade body, the British Plastics Federation (BPF), have voiced concern about the rate of increase the proposed new targets would involve.
Philip Law, public & industrial affairs director at the BPF, said: “We feel the target, a massive increase of 32%, is not achievable in under 10 years. This would not be possible, even if there was a necessary huge investment in the recycling infrastructure and standardised local authority collection, sorting and recycling systems which we do not have.”
In addition, the BPF also drew attention to the fact that Germany has had an active plastics recycling scheme for 15 years and still only managed to achieve a 42% recycling rate.
Plastics 2020
The industry-sponsored Plastics 2020 Challenge campaign, has set its sights on boosting the UK plastics recycling rate to 50% by 2020, and stressed that any targets set by government should, while being ambitious, also be “realistic and achieveable”.
It explained that its own 50% goal, which was based on “careful analysis of what could be achieved”, was already “very ambitious” as it would push the UK to be the highest performing country in Europe by 2020, with no country in Europe projecting rates as high as the UK plastics industry.
Jan-Erik Johansson, a spokesman for the campaign, said: “Although the Plastics 2020 Challenge welcomes the government's commitment to increase performance, it's essential that industry and government work in partnership and recognise the trends learning on recycling from across Europe and worldwide before setting a target well beyond what any other country achieve today.”
The organisation stressed that imposing such targets should take into account the necessary infrastructure needed to handle the additional material and the difference in collection models and material ranges used by local authorities.
Recoup
Stuart Foster, director at plastics recycling organisation Recoup, told letsrecycle.com: “We support increasing targets as long as they are achievable and if it is hard to see how we will actually achieve it then we will have an issue.”
However, Mr Foster said that the organisation would not wish to make any further comment until it had thoroughly digested the implications of the consultation.
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