Recoup warns that rise in bottle recycling is not enough to meet targets

The organisation which promotes plastic bottle recycling schemes has published the latest audit of bottle recycling which show that in 2000 49% of local authorities operated a plastic bottle collection scheme of one sort or another. But, in many cases the schemes did not cover all the council area.

It found there were 210 schemes, 80 for kerbside and bring, 45 kerbside alone and 85 with bring banks.
The survey forecast that collection of material reached 12,715 tonnes of plastics bottles in 2000 from 3.6 million households with 4,115 banks in place on 2,851 sites. But while Recoup forecasted an increase for 2001, it is projecting that there could be a slight fall in 2002.

Andrew Simmons, Recoup director, told letsrecycle that while the organisation was at this point expecting a small fall in 2002, when more details were received from local authorities it was likely that there would continue to be an increase in that year.

However, he conceded that more needs to be done. “If you ask me whether this is going to be enough to meet the requirements of the packaging directive and household waste targets then I don’t think so. Much more must be done in the domestic was stream to collect materials.”

Mr Simmons said there was an urgent need for more multi-material collections from household and the introduction of broad based innovative programmes to achieve the diversion rates required to meet the targets.

One bright note for Recoup came with the part of the survey which looked at the reasons that council do not get involved in plastics recycling. More councils are now convinced of the environmental benefit than in the past and there is more awareness of the opportunities for plastics recycling. In contrast the amount of councils considering that they had insufficient funds to do recycling stood at 78%.