Recoup calls on councils to collect more plastic

The plastic bottle recycling organisation Recoup held its annual general meeting last week and said that volumes of plastic needs to increase but warned that this depended on convincing local authorities that plastics recycling is affordable. Recoup has released the initial findings of its 2000 local authority survey which shows that 78% of local authorities don't collect plastic bottles because of “insufficient funds”.

But Andrew Simmons, who was promoted from Recoup's business manager to chief executive at the AGM, said that the survey revealed “inaccurate and inflated” views of the cost of recycling plastic. He said: “The demand is there and the market is there. But people's perception of the costs is often greater than they actually are. Most local authorities report successful recycling of mixed plastics bottles at a cost of about a penny a bottle – between 200 and 250 a tonne, and closer to 50 to 150 for single stream dairy bottles. Reprocessing waste plastics is not a problem – it’s the increase in collection volumes that we need now.”

There are now over 210 plastic bottle recycling schemes in the UK which collected over 12,715 tonnes of plastic bottles last year. And Recoup said the infrastructure is there to cope with higher quantities of material as recyclers can now handle large volumes of plastic and the large-scale materials recycling facilities which are being built “gives urgency to the need to collect and deliver sufficient quantities of plastics to recyclers”.

More feasible

But one of the problems with plastic collections is that it is not economically viable to sort the material which makes it more feasible to collect a single type of bottle such as a milk bottle. Recoup is encouraging more authorities to look at single milk bottle collections which have proved successful in Bromley, Cornwall and Sevenoaks and last week the organisation set up a new scheme with 20 milk bottle bring banks in Bexley.

Mr Simmons said: “It is a more affordable approach and gets councils on the first rung of the ladder, once a scheme is introduced then it is easier to expand it than start a collection system from scratch. We have had lot of enquiries from councils about setting up similar schemes.”

Recoup was formed to promote plastic recycling but at its AGM, members voted to drop the word “containers” from its name so that the organisation is now called RECycling Of Used Plastics. Recoup chairman, Mike Barney said that this reflected Recoup’s involvement in every kind of plastics recycling, including containers, film and distribution packaging.

Mr Simmons added: “The name change formally recognises that our business is broader than plastic bottles. It sets Recoup up well for the future and makes it possible for us to deliver a more comprehensive service. This will be matched to the legislation affecting plastics wastestreams which will strengthen Recoup’s capacity to support the required “step change” in UK plastics recycling.” Mr Simmons will take up his new position on October 1.

The AGM also saw Jean Paul Goulin of Eastman Chemicals, David Catton of Sainsburys and Maggie Butt of Grabor Plastics appointed as director and Paul Bowtell of ASDA and James McKechnie of Sainsburys stepping down.